Problem solving is a key skill required to be a developer. You need to have the skills to be able to approach new problems with a plan, in order to find the solution. This could involve breaking the problem down into smaller parts, and solving each part individually before putting all the parts together.
Methods you can use to help you solve a problem are the rubber ducky method, reading error messages, using console.log, googling and asking your peers for help. I think using the rubber ducky technique is very useful – it has worked for me on a number of occasions. Sometimes just saying out loud what you are trying to solve, solves it for you. I also really value asking my peers and coaches for help if I’m stuck on something and have be trying on my own to solve it, as they offer an outside perspective and enable to you look at the problem from a different angle.
I got stuck on the very last part of the game board challenge in sprint 3 for quite a while. It really stumped me, and I think because I got stuck going down one train of thought, it was hard initially to see how on earth I wasn’t getting it. It seemed simple enough, but after trying all the options I could think of, I had to ask for help. However, the task still didn’t click with me, so I left it and went for a long walk and didn’t look at it over the weekend.
When I came back to it the next week, I was able to look at the challenge with a new perspective and try things I hadn’t thought of previously. I then managed to solve the problem. It was a frustrating process to begin with, but it was a good lesson in problem solving and having patience.
I guess you could say I at least tried to solve the above problem elegantly, by using the techniques we have learnt about at Dev Academy. I knew I needed to take a step back as I thought I was probably over-complicating the issue, so I took time away from solving the issue and moved on. I also asked for help from other EDA students and the facilitators, both of whom were a great help.
I feel fairly confident with the problem-solving techniques such as the rubber ducky method, asking for help and googling.
I feel slightly less confident using pseudocode as a means to problem solve, as JavaScript is still rather confusing for me, so I haven’t found writing pseudocode to be that helpful so far. This will probably become more useful once I understand JavaScript more and feel more confident in JavaScript in general.