Ever since this concept was introduced to us back at the place we used to call tuk tuk, I have come to love its application and the comical nature in which the situations present themselves.
By definition, Catch 22 is a paradoxical situation in which an individual cannot escape as a result of the contradiction of the rules. This comes about as a result of the rules applying in which the individual has no control over. A more detailed definition can be found in Wikipedia.
Upto date the best way to understand catch 22 is by following examples. I have three, 2 of which have been learned from experience and one the example I never forgot from tuk tuk.
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Sick soldier – At the military camp a soldier cannot be deployed if the are suffering from a mental illness. For a soldier to be diagnosed of mental illness they have to report to the camp’s medical unit. However if a soldier has mental illness they won’t know they have it in the first place and hence won’t report it to the medical unit. Consequently they will never be barred from being deployed.
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Google the solution – Assuming that one is Network administrator. If they have some technical problem in which no one within the network can access the internet and the only way to solve it is to use the internet to search it. Of course the assumption here is that no one has a smartphone or some other device.
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Error logging within a transaction – A developer write code to do a task such a save some details to a Database. This code involves writing to multiple table in an atomic fashion. This transaction also involves writing an error message to a database of any of those steps fail. Whenever there is a failure then even the error message won’t be logged and the developer will be caught in the cycle of error where he can’t tell what really happened. Now this is what I call a self inflicted catch22.