

Stop trying to solve abstract problems - pea
http://blog.kivo.com/stop-trying-to-solve-abstract-problems/

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jeremysmyth
This is a baity headline that doesn't actually match the article's topic
(although the article's author probably thinks so).

It should've been called "Create a clear problem statement before you create a
product to solve that problem," because the situation they're describing has
little to do with abstract problems and more to do with _not defining the
concrete problem in the first place_.

There are plenty of situations where abstract problems exist that require
thought rather than iteration. You only need to look at risk analysis and
planning to see an example close at hand. Further afield you've got tonnes of
examples in math and physics, and even further back the whole field of
philosophy began because of abstract problems. These things don't have a
concrete product as their _goal_ though, which is a situation that this
article describes.

~~~
j2kun
There have been a few posts on HN recently that make this same
misunderstanding. Problems in the web/social industry are rarely well-defined,
and people think the problem is that we don't have good algorithms or that
thinking hard is somehow ineffective. But the real problem is nobody clearly
knows what the problem is. I claim that this is the clearest evidence that
software engineers should develop more mathematical thinking skills.

