Problem Solving
Technical Blog
Rage moment on a simple problem:
During the JavaScript Kata’s I was trying to solve
super-fizzbuzz, I had solved FizzBuzz with confidence and was
feeling really good about my chances of solving the harder
version of it. I wrote out what I believed would be a solid
working solution but it did not work. I didn’t understand the
error message so I asked google and tried to do some research
and couldn’t find a good explanation for it. I checked my code
again but everything look right!
I got super frustrated and ended up walking away but I couldn’t
stop thinking about the problem, I spent a good amount of time
pacing and mumbling to myself about the issue. In the end I
asked my friend to look over my code and found out I had made a
very simple mistake. I had tried to access the array as if it
were an object. I made the change and voila! It worked!
I was elated that the problem was fixed, but I couldn’t help
feeling defeated that I had made such a simple error. When I
asked my friend how he figured it out so quickly he praised me
for reaching out for help and told me not to worry about it and
that everyone makes simple mistakes all the time, the trick is
to not give up and to make use what you have access to, like
coworkers and friends in the future.
Problem solving, the right way:
In my downtime lately I’ve been enjoying practising the kata’s
on
Codewars. Its been a lot
of fun and recently I tried a challenge that looked quite
complex and at first glance it had me stumped. The challenge was
based off the like system that facebook and other social media
sites use on posts, based on who liked the post and how many
people like it, it wanted to update the text to show who liked
the post.
To begin with I spent some time with my rubber duck and tried to
write some pseudocode and broke the problem down into parts. My
code needed to:
Just these two steps gave me direction on what tools I needed. I
decided before I started coding to refresh my memory on if
statements and arrays so as to avoid starting it incorrectly.
I then just tried out my initial thoughts and found that no
matter how many names were in the array it was always producing
the final else in my if statement - “no one likes this post”. I
decided to comment out my original code and then break it down
and simplify it, making it so there was only two possibilities,
if there are names - return: “there are names” and else (when
the array is empty) - return “there is no names”. By doing this
I realised I had incorrectly used the equal to operator in my
code and I wasn’t doing it against the length of the array but
the array itself. I was then able to make the change in my
original code and test it out. Thankfully it worked this time
and I was really glad I kept a calm and focused approach to the
problem instead of yelling at my computer, its really important
to remember your code just does what you tell it to!
Reflections about problem solving skills:
| Technique | Assessment |
|---|---|
| Pseudocode | Confident - I enjoy breaking down problems and writing a solution without technical terms. |
| Trying something | Confident - Ideas are a great way to come up with new solutions and trying things you've done in the past to solve new problems can gives you a leg-up. |
| Rubber ducky method | Confident - He's definitely earning his rent at the moment. |
| Reading error messages | Not Confident - Sometimes they point to a place I don't expect them to and it confuses me. I also find it hard to pull them apart for what they are. I need a lot more practise with this. |
| Console.logging | Neutral - I know how to use this but quite often skip over it as I haven't needed to put it into practise much. |
| Googling | Confident - I have a keen interest in finding things out. Google is like a best friend. |
| Asking your peers for help | Confident - I know when and how to ask for help, even when I'm reluctant to I'm aware enough of when I need to, I also know that asking for advice often makes you available to share advice as well. |
| Asking coaches for help | Confident - I like to present potential solutions and ask for guidance rather than answers. |
| Improving your process with reflection | Neutral - I often start very intentional and follow that path. |
Why asking for help is important:
Quite often I find it difficult to ask for help, I like trying to solve problems on my own and that opens me up to becoming stressed and burnt out on problems I believe I should be able to solve. When I was creating this website for the first time I went through a vast range of emotions, small victories and frustrations as well as a total rage moment followed by me recentering myself and deciding it would be a good idea to start fresh. I think it was the right idea in the end but meant I had effectively cut my timeframe down due to the original plan being scrapped. Luckily it wasn’t wasted time as it had the basics all fresh in my mind and let move forward with a direct plan in mind. However as I was drawing to an end I ran into some problems with image placement. It got me fired up again and I was ready to quit, luckily I got over myself and decided to compromise. Instead of directly asking for a solution I asked for a hint, it was the perfect help I needed and I was really glad I reached out. I think this new perspective will be really useful for future attempts.