Problem Solving

Tell your non-tech friend a story about a time you...

Were blocked on a simple problem:

One of the times I was blocked on a problem was when I was doing the “gradebook” challenge where I had to add each student from an array into an empty object and then add each student’s scores that was an array inside of an array into the student scores key.

The problem solving techniques I tried using were the rubber ducky method and using pseudocode to break down each part of my code and asking someone to help. Throughout that process I felt just slightly overwhelmed as it sounded like a simple task but my thought process kept trying to make it complicated and automate it when it was just an extremely simple task.

Overall I learnt that sometimes I just need to simplify the problem without reading too much into it and it’s always good to ask someone to look at your code to point stuff out.

Elegantly solved a problem:

A time I ‘elegantly’ solved a problem would have to be when working on the “whereAreYou” challenge as I used the googling method to learn about the .find() method and then acted upon it with the rubber duck method which allowed me to complete it with ease. After completing the challenge I felt very accomplished and then decided to use my free time to look at other JS methods.

Reflect on how confident you feel using each of these problem-solving techniques/processes:

After completing the JS: kata exercise I can say that I definitely feel confident in my ability to use problem solving techniques such as:

• Pseudocode
• Rubber ducky method
• Reading error messages
• Console.logging

Reflect on a time you were reluctant to ask for help. Consider what made you reluctant to do so. What might you try differently next time?

The time I was reluctant to ask for help was also during the “gradebook” challenge as I felt it was supposed to be a really easy challenge since no one else had asked anything in the discord “help desk” chat. I definitely will be a bit more confident in asking for help next time as I found out most people were also having difficulties with similar problems as well and were also reluctant to ask.

The End.