Today, I\u2019m going to tell you about a really important concept that I think is going to help you in your career: the idea of learning to solve problems. So many developers focus on the syntax, the language, and learning to \u201ccode\u201d or to program, but not on solving problems. I can tell you why that\u2019s so important in a second here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A lot of new developers, even a lot of senior developers, don\u2019t understand what you need to do as a software developer: learn to solve problems, not just to code. I think there is a real emphasis, especially for people who are starting to learn programming and want to get into this field, to learn about the structure of the programming language and all the syntax of it, and to focus on that as being the important thing to learn. That\u2019s really not the critical skill because, as a software developer, you are not going to\u2014I mean, it is important to know the language that you\u2019re using\u2014but the more important skill that you\u2019re going to be required to utilize, and that is more difficult to learn, is the actual ability to solve problems, break them down, and then translate them to code, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You have to know both, but if you could only develop one skill as a software developer, I would actually teach you to not even know any syntax of any programming language, just pseudo-code, and just teach you how to take problems and break them down into the smallest components and pieces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ultimately, this is what determines whether or not you\u2019re a good software developer, right? As a software developer becomes good at their craft and is able to really excel, their ability really is not knowing programming languages or frameworks. Those are all useful, but it\u2019s not that ability. It\u2019s the ability to take what is a problem, break it down into small pieces that can be understood and organized well, and break those pieces down into smaller subsystems and components until that problem is broken down to the point of a single line of code, or even within that, the actual operations that make up that line of code.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s what a really skilled software developer can do. They can see this big problem and break it down logically, and you keep on refining, refining, refining until you get to a single line of code. When you have that ability, it becomes really easy to write code.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why? Because at the point that you\u2019ve broken it down that far, it\u2019s just a simple translation. It\u2019s just a simple translation from, \u201cI want this thing, this code that I know how to do,\u201d and you don\u2019t even need to know the programming language to do that, right? You could literally have the ability to break problems down to the smallest atomic detail, and then you could literally go and look up the syntax and figure out how to write that line of code in that programming language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In fact, I\u2019ve done that many times. I have written code in a programming language that I knew nothing about, and the way that I was able to do that was by refining the skill of learning to break down problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have a resource that I\u2019m going to point to: Algocademy.com. Algocademy offers a range of courses and tutorials focused on problem-solving and algorithmic thinking. These resources guide you through the process of breaking down complex problems and approaching them methodically. You can check out their courses to enhance your skills in a structured way. Another good book is “Cracking the Coding Interview.” Although I feel like the interactive nature of courses like those on Algocademy will be more beneficial, these resources are what I\u2019d recommend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The point of this article is just to make you aware of the idea that, especially as you\u2019re starting out as a beginner, or even if you\u2019re somewhat of an advanced programmer but you\u2019re struggling, like you don\u2019t feel competent, you don\u2019t feel like you can always solve problems and write code, you feel like you could fix some bugs, you feel like you kind of get it, but you don\u2019t understand how these guys are able to, like, how would I build an entire app by myself? These are questions I used to ask myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How would I create an entire web application? I could work on a piece of this, but I couldn\u2019t design and create the whole thing. The biggest thing is that everything is a problem, right? If you can learn that skill of breaking down problems and translating them, and if you can focus on that, you\u2019re going to get a lot further in your career, where so many people are focused on the language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Things have changed a lot over the years. I believe, probably 20 years ago or so, even when I was first starting out and learning programming, understanding the language and its syntax was way more important than it is now because you didn\u2019t have as many resources, and you didn\u2019t have as many libraries. What you were doing was solving problems within the language, and knowing the ins and outs of the language was critical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, as a developer, it\u2019s all a mash-up of different technologies. Everything is changing out from underneath you, so you have to focus on actually learning how to break down problems and then translating that ability to whatever language or domain it is. You\u2019re going to find that it\u2019s all the same. It\u2019s all the same once you have that skill set. That\u2019s the reason why you can know one programming language, and if you\u2019ve got the skill to break down problems, you could go, literally, to a company that programs in a totally different language\u2014and I\u2019ve done this before, I\u2019ve gotten jobs like this\u2014and within a matter of weeks, be able to program in that language at pretty close to just as high a level as someone who\u2019s been doing it for a long time because the critical skill is that ability to break down problems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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