Why is power cycling a device always the first step in troubleshooting it (and is usually effective)?

Question

shadowfiend · Answer

Ain't that a great question. Power cycling devices usually resets them in a variety of ways. Many bugs/issues tend to be the result of the device getting into a state that was not anticipated by the people who built it—a state that wasn't designed for, and therefore cannot be dealt with. Power cycling takes the device out of that state, thus bringing it back to an expected situation.

anonymous · Answer

Tom Knight and the Lisp Machine

A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off and on.

Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: “You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong.”

Knight turned the machine off and on.

The machine worked.

anonymous · Answer

And at that moment, the student was enlightened.

shadowfiend · Answer

Lol.