
Ask HN: How do you teach problem solving skills to software engineers? - ratpik
More often than not, I get people who have decent work experience and seem suited for a role but fail to unlearn and re-learn new ways of doing things. A lot of these people tend to come from a service company background where they do not dive  deep into solving problems with code and instead try to cut-paste from across the internet which is good enough for projects that might not ever get completed or used only internally.<p>How does one re-train people who might have learnt computer science fundamentals at some point but have lost track of how to solve problems over the course of their earlier work experience?
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kifler
Ask them to write instructions on how to tie their shoe.

Chances are, someone will say that they just bend over and tie them.

Point out to them that it isn't quite that simple - once they see that a
problem can be broken down further to the point that you're telling your hand
to put the lace against your index finger's first knuckle and the point of the
middle finger, they begin to understand - then introduce your methods which
they happily embrace.

