

Ask HN: How do we solve problems? - jackreichert

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. <p>I&#x27;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?<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.google.com&#x2F;forms&#x2F;d&#x2F;1vvRtBaQCGtQVz-7wrJTVeuXxJ5zAR02AbCc8MUPaD5A&#x2F;viewform
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JSeymourATL
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...](http://www.nightingale.com/articles/the-great-
problem-solving-tool/)

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crzytrane
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.

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kluck
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.

