This- I knew the electrical sense that early software engineers working on hobby computers probably got it from, where it refers to wiring something up, plugging it in for the first time and seeing if it lights on fire / creates smoke.
That reminds me of a story[0] my digital electronics instructor once told me. He was on a team working on satellite[1] electronics and had the whole thing laid out on breadboard. It wasn't working, and they suspected it was a short, but with so many connections everywhere it would take forever to find. So they decided to crank up the input current until the short started burning and locate it that way. It apparently didn't cause anything to smoke, but eventually someone did notice the orange-hot wire that was causing the problem.
[0] I have a terrible memory so details may be incorrect.
[1] IIRC this guy had worked on geostar satellites and the hubble, but I'm not sure if this story was about either.
Yeah, this is not uncommon as a testing technique. Fuse keeps blowing? Replace it with a bigger fuse (or a heavy gauge wire) and eventually something else will pop (hopefully the bad component).
I guess there is a dual origin though
https://medium.com/@AikoPath/about-the-origin-of-smoke-testi...