I always ride my Yamaha Rx135 to anywhere. This is the motorcycle I use for my commutation from my home to office and vice versa.

Couple of days back, I filled gas and was riding to my office. It would go for sometime and stop abruptly. I just had to kick-start for couple of times, start it and go on. Again after sometime, it would stop abruptly, as if the gas tank is empty. Well, this was really frustrating, especially if it happens when you are on the way to office in the morning. I checked everything that I could: Choke, Gas flow to Engine, Spark Plug … everything that I thought I should check.

Failed on all troubleshooting, I had to get a Mechanic to look into this. I explained him all my troubleshooting results. He listened very carefully and he just glanced my bike from top to bottom. He asked me whether I filled gas recently. I nodded. And then came a question: DID YOU CLOSE THE GAS TANK LID PROPERLY? I just checked it and found IT WAS NOT. He explained the reason, that the air pressure was not proper inside the Gas tank, as it was opened. Since it allowed air inside, it did not propel the gas evenly to the engine, and thereby causing an Air Lock while riding.

So that’s the reason. It’s just an ignorance that caused this. I overlooked this and was checking every other detail. I did not check something irrelevant, but I did not check completely either.

How does this relate to Software Development? It does. You may have to go thru’ this article of mine: Declaring Variables to Relevant Datatypes. Well, that is just an instance.

Often, we do all important things while we develop something, double-check the details and finally somehow skip something which is very simple, yet have very critical impact. This could be just an unintentional ignorance, but could be avoided if we are a bit more attentive to the details.

While we cannot always avoid such instances, we can certainly minimize such occurrences.

Vaidy