Analog electronic design without the trial and horror

After renowned physicist Max Planck received the Nobel Prize in 1918, he went on an academic tour across Germany. Wherever he was invited, he delivered the exact same lecture. Over time, his chauffeur memorized the entire thing and asked his passenger: “How about I do the lecture tonight? It’ll be a nice change of pace for the both of us.” That evening Planck sat in the back row, wearing the chauffeur’s cap, witnessing his driver delivering the lecture perfectly. When he was done, a member of the audience stood up and asked a question. To which the chauffeur replied: “I would have never expected such an elementary question from an audience as distinguished as this. I’ll let my driver answer it.”

The humorous story is probably apocryphal, but there’s good reason why it’s still being told today: it makes the important point that there are two different types of knowledge. There’s Planck knowledge, possessed by people who have done the work and have gained true insight, and there’s Chauffeur’s knowledge, possessed by people who learned the talk but don’t really understand what they’re saying.