   Obvious solutions being missed
  Let''s say your writing a program and it gets a bug in it. You search and search for it, but you can''t find what''s causing the problem. Then someone who knows nothing about you program or maybe even programming points out something in the code and you see that that was causing the problem. It was just an obvious mistake that you didn''t catch.Now let''s say this is happening with the cure for cancer. What if the cure is so obvious that people are missing it? Is there a name for this type of situation or the person that comes along and solves the problem? I think I remember hearing something about it before. 
  no, this only happens to coders.I was at programming team practice today, we had to decrypt a simple character replace cipher. The spaces were even left in the text, unchanged. We knew that "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" was in the text. It took my partner and me an hour and a half. Actually writing it took about 20 minutes, and another 10 to work out the errors, another 10 to work out some NullPointerExceptions. The next HOUR was spent making small changes, undoing them, testing the program, finding out it was working okay up to that point. Finally, undid all the changes, and some nagging thought popped in my head. Checked a doc, typed 5 CHARACTERS, and it ran perfectly. an HOUR to add 5 CHARACTERS to get it to run absolutely perfectly. ;  I want to say deus ex machina, but that''s not right, and hopefully, by posting this, I''ll have supplanted the right answer in someone''s head with the wrong one.. heheh.*clicks Reply To Topic with a vengeance* ;  Its Deus Ex Mach...wait, no.  Damn, I lost it.I don''t know any single words, but I''ve always been fond of the following phrase:If the solution were a snake, your mom would be sucking my ass.Its accurate, and insulting, all at once!CM ;  But how would you know it bit you? ;quote:Original post by TSwitch  I want to say deus ex machina, but that''s not right, and hopefully, by posting this, I''ll have supplanted the right answer in someone''s head with the wrong one.. heheh.Yeah, deus ex machina is a device in stories where the ending gets resolved by an outside force that had nothing to do with the rest of the story.I was thinking idiot savant when I wrote this post, but that''s referring to autism I believe. ;quote:Original post by TSwitch  But how would you know it bit you?   Because my butt would hurt.  CM ;quote:Original post by mtw  Is there a name for this type of situation or the person that comes along and solves the problem? I think I remember hearing something about it before.   Can''t see the wood for the trees?Blinkered? ;  how about idiotified ;  As far as cursing + coding goes, I call my computer a "damn box" sometimes. Somehow I don''t feel the urge to insult it seriously. 