Re:Ask HN: Which books have made you a better thinker and pr...
by elgar1212 on Wednesday November 30, 2022 @03:40PM
(#33807332)
I can't think of any book that's really helped me solve problems. The reason for this is that reading isn't a problem solving activity, it's relatively open ended. You can do exercises, but most of them don't have any sort of grading system that outputs a pass or fail. So there isn't any signal to train off of
The thing that taught me the most about solving problems was doing a bunch of autograded systems programming assignments, and reading about how other people went about doing the assignments
I developed this mindset (note this is for writing code for an autograder that no one else will read, it isn't going into a long term codebase):
- only do the bare minimum necessary to satisfy all criteria
- ignore any bloat that people suggest unless it's part of the shortest cost path
- figure out one way of doing something, and just reuse it so that you can use the mental energy elsewhere
- reread the instructions so many times that you can mentally "see" all the logic before the first line gets written
The thing that taught me the most about solving problems was doing a bunch of autograded systems programming assignments, and reading about how other people went about doing the assignments
I developed this mindset (note this is for writing code for an autograder that no one else will read, it isn't going into a long term codebase):
- only do the bare minimum necessary to satisfy all criteria
- ignore any bloat that people suggest unless it's part of the shortest cost path
- figure out one way of doing something, and just reuse it so that you can use the mental energy elsewhere
- reread the instructions so many times that you can mentally "see" all the logic before the first line gets written