Ask HN: How do we solve problems?

4 points by jackreichert 10 years ago | 3 comments

I am a strong believer that if we have a skill in one area of our life, that skill spills over into other areas of our life…. and developers solve problems all day long. I’m working on a series of articles that explores how developers solve problems, outside of code.

I'm interested in your thoughts... I know a lot of you have a development background or work closely with people who do, would you be willing to take a short survey that might lead to a deeper discussion?

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1vvRtBaQCGtQVz-7wrJTVeuXxJ5zAR02AbCc8MUPaD5A/viewform

JSeymourATL 10 years ago |

The late Earl Nightingale had an excellent article on the subject of problem solving; which a refer to a couple of times a year.

The Great Problem-Solving Tool> http://www.nightingale.com/articles/the-great-problem-solvin...

crzytrane 10 years ago |

1. Understand the result you want. 2. List possible ways to achieve this result(whether this be ways to debug a program or similar) 3. Weight each option to each other doing simple cost-benifit 4. Follow cheapest method that gets the results done.

kluck 10 years ago |

I suggest reading "How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method" by G. Polya und John H. Conway. Note: it's not about mathematics but about general problem solving.