[codazoda]

Even simple stuff takes me multiple tries. I don’t know how any engineer gets a design right the first time. I can build it in a 3D design app, look all around it, and STILL see something in the prototype that was not obvious in the design.

[jacquesm]

I just built something I had to get right on the first try because messing it up would be more than a little dangerous. Endless fitting and testing and re-thinking before committing to building it. A little cheating was involved, I built a 1/17th scale test setup to ensure that all the electrical bits would work.

[stavros]

Does it?!

[jacquesm]

Yes, it works. Test rides three days ago, first real trip yesterday, 65 km there and back on a single charge. Write-up one of these days, have to collect all the material.

[nynx]

Electric bike?

[jacquesm]

2KWh+ battery pack in a very weird shape.

[stavros]

Excellent.

[jacquesm]

I've never actually been scared of stuff I built before, that's a first (and that doesn't mean that I shouldn't have been scared with other projects, just that I wasn't either because I wasn't aware they were dangerous or simply too absorbed to stop and think about it).

[tomcam]

Wait what did you build?

[alok-g]

I have gotten designs first-time right multiple times in my career, and in fact more often first-time right than not. And so for both hardware and software.

For the last few years however I have gradually been loosing that and have started going easier on myself when I discover a mistake.

The requirement to get it right in the first time is more stringent for integrated circuit designers (which I have been too) as cycle times are in months. It is true that several tools are set up around this to help find issues before designs are sent out for fabrication. However, the tools are not perfect, and considerable insights, eye for detail and perfectionism and are still required to make a design work in the first shot.