My Problem Solving Methods

Blocked on a simple problem - pesky return statements

The Problem - It was not hard

Quite a few times I have forgotten that when writing functions if you want them to return something, you need a return statement. This is pretty obvious, but has held me up a lot - because I can be a consummate idiot.

The Fix - Problem Solving

My first step for me is always a quick google to see if I've forgotten something stupid (like a return statement). Unfortunately in most of these cases it wasn't immediately clear why my code wasn't working, so I found that I wasn't immediately sure what to google. I checked that all my basic code made sense and checked my syntax against the relevant documentation, and double/triple checked all my spelling - although VSCode is pretty good at suggesting the correct options to you, which I've found significantly minimises these kind of stuff ups. Still nothing - everything looked all good!

So far I've found that the best debugging method for me is the rubber ducky method (or in my case - the "random duplo man my son left on my desk one day method"). I just go through the code line-by-line and explain to Ferdinand (that's his name - he is a latino builder called Ferdinand) what everything does. Eventually I'll tell Ferdy that the function then passes its results back to the main code. Except it doesn't. Because there is no return statement. Ferdy will then look at me knowingly, and I'll swear sometimes he enigmatically nods his little duplo head, like a minature Yoda (but latino and a builder). I'll say: "Thanks Ferdy, turns out I'm an idiot!" and the problem will be fixed! Until tomorrow, when I will do it again...

The Feelings - Fun but Frustrating

Solving problems like this can be fun, but also frustrating depending on your mindset (see this week's core post!) Fun because when it doesn't work it's great to figure out WHY it doesn't work, and you get a little dopamine hit when you figure it out. Frustrating because you might have limited time and other stuff to do - especially if it's a simple fix that it took you ages to spot.

The Lessons - What's the takeaway?

Almost every time I've found myself stuck for more than ten minutes, it's turned out to be the easiest fix imaginable. It almost seems like the longer it takes you to figure it out, the simpler the problem is. I think this is becuase we have a built-in idea that the time taken to solve problems is proportional to their complexity - which couldn't be farther from the truth as is turns out. The longer the problem went on, the more I assumed it had to be something complicated. A variable in the wrong scope maybe? But no, just a simple function that does its job perfectly, and doesn't tell you the answer! Lesson learned - just because you haven't figured it out quickly, doesn't mean it isn't simple!

Elegant problem solving - The Javascript Cafe

The problem - targeting elements

We recently had a code-along challenge to build a cafe using JavaScript, which had some fun stretch exercises. One was to add a button to each product to restock it by one whenever the button was clicked. One option was to add event listeners / functionality to each button individually, but this seemed a bit repetitive. I wanted to have one function take care of every button push and restock operation, without having to rewrite Joseph's code (seemed like cheating).

The Fix - googling documentation

For this one I did some research on W3 Schools and the MDN Docs websites to try and find a solution. Eventually I found a way to target the previous sibling of an element using JavaScript, meaning when the button was clicked it would apply the restocking operation to the element before it - perfect for what I needed!

The Feelings - exciting but overwhelming

Checking out those websites can be a daunting process. There is a whole lot of stuff on there that is way beyond my level currently, so it's easy to get a hit of imposter syndrome when wading in and trying to find the slice of information you need. That being said, when you hit on something that you think might help you and then actually make it work, then it makes you feel like some kind of web-developing god!

The Lessons - you aren't an imposter

In the tech space there is always going to be more stuff you don't know about than stuff that you do - so the most important lesson from this problem was that you just have to accept that and not let it get to you, and not let yourself get distracted by all the other shiny things you might encounter on them interwebs!