Most of us who have applied a programming job as a fresher would know there is one common thing mentioned in the job post –
“Problem solving skills”
In my humble(but correct) opinion this is mainly because most of programming is solving problems or providing solutions.
Now I have never been a natural coder, never enjoyed it in university so when I started my training in iOS development I had my doubts. But kudos to my mentors who were instrumental in shaping me. I still remember what one of them told me before starting the training –
“As long as you know how if-else and for loops work you’re good to go”
That was all that was needed. Fast forward 4months later I find a job as a junior iOS developer. This is a startup with about 35 employees. An agency which provides solutions to various clients across the globe so there was never a shortage of projects. Even as a junior developer I was working on 2 projects simultaneously where my major role was finding and fixing bugs. When you have to do that there are mainly these steps –
- Debug and find the part of code causing the issue
- Identify the problem
- Look for a solution/fix
- Implemented the fix
- Test the fix to make sure it works correctly and nothing else was affected.
- Deploy
With time I realised once you have figured out #1 & 2, there is no point thinking about the problem more. Instead, the focus should be on #3. Finding the solution. Everyone has their own way to do it. Some lookup the official documentation, some go to stack overflow, some are skilled enough to fix it without any internet connection. Whatever be the case, yes you do need to identify the problem and make sure you identify it correctly to solve it, but there is no point thinking about the problem. Instead focus on the solution.
That’s what got into my subconscious and helped me in general. In life too whenever I have a problem, I’m inclined towards finding a solution and not worrying about the problem, as that’s what I’m almost hardwired to do.
So coder or not, the key takeaway here is focusing on the solution when you hit a roadblock.
You were on a road and you hit a pothole, and on the other side of the pothole is the rest of the road!!!
