> Now, we have to get a little philosophical here. In my eyes, RE is like a game of minesweeper. You start with an empty field not knowing the state of any of the cells, i.e. not knowing whether each individual cell contains a landmine or not. When you discover the state of a cell, you have the context to deduce the state of its neighbor cells. In minesweeper, you don’t have a particular direction in which you progress. You never say “In this game of minesweeper, I want to go up no matter what”, you just let the numbers nudge you in the direction that is the easiest to go in at the moment. I assert that this is also true for RE. Once you find out what a function or a variable does, you suddenly understand a little more about functions and variables that depend on the ones whose meaning you’ve just inferred. It may be beneficial not to set any particular goal with an RE project, and instead letting the complex network of intertwined functions and variables guide you towards understanding the system as a whole.
That's such a nice way to think about it. Maybe I should try giving RE a go again.
I don’t know RE but I love this sentiment. I think it’s quite generalizable too. So many things are like that. Just start somewhere. It really doesn’t matter where. And what you find will guide your next steps. Eventually you’ll have enough context to see a much bigger picture well before it’s fully revealed.
The one difference is in re you sometimes go up no matter what because there isn't enough information. (in minesweeper I typically pick a few squares early because without them the game probably won't be solveable anyway. Typically in thegame once you have enough solved you have it all - once in a while a couple squares are unknowable. In re you hit points where you know all the clues can get you more often and so have to try something at random. Otoh it is much rarer in re for a wrong try to be catestropic [not unheard of but rare]
That's such a nice way to think about it. Maybe I should try giving RE a go again.