Gridley Trail to Nordhoff Peak, May 1, 2012:
Sometimes the best approach is to accept the default.
A long time ago I needed to run a program that implemented an algorithm for a particular type of data analysis that was fairly new at the time. For the computer historians the system was a VAX 11/785 running 4.2 BSD Unix. I obtained a copy of the code and somehow got it to compile and all seemed well to that point. As with many programs of the era, upon execution this one read a command file full of directives in some arcane format that set all the required runtime parameters. I opened the command file in my old friend, the text editor vi, and did not understand most of the hundreds of lines of configuration details. I contacted the author and received advice that I have found useful in many areas of life, “The best approach is to accept the defaults.”