Tell your non-tech friend a story about a time you:
Got blocked on a simple problem:
During this sprint I got stuck on some of the katas, for example the fizzbuzz challenge. Now this basically involves taking a list of numbers someone gives you and then going through and re-writing it. So it has to be re-written in a way that any number that is a multiple of 3 is “fizz instead, any number that is a multiple of 5 is “buzz”, and any number that is a multiple of 15 is “fizzbuzz”; then you hand this new “FizzBuzzed” list back to the person that asked for it.
What was the problem:
Well my first problem was trying iterate, or go through the list one by one and testing it by the multiples; then once I had figured out to do that, I needed a way to test if it was a multiple. What problem solving techniques did you use? I went back to the list of basic Javascript courses we had done in Free Code Camp courses remembering we had gone through something similar already, between this and Google I was able to work out what was needed. How did you feel about the process? Good - it was good to know I had something that I could go back to and reference, then search Google from there to help reinforce the method I was looking at.
Solved a problem in an elegant way:
I am not sure I did really, there was a lot of write something, delete re-write. I guess the most elegant way did solve something was the rubber ducky way, I read through my code out loud to figure out why it wasn’t working and found a bracket missing.How did you feel throughout the process? Mixed emotions mostly determined, but there was also a little frustration, and a lot of elation once something passed the final test
What did you learn?
That you can do a lot with just the basics we had learnt so far.
Reflect on how confident you feel using the problem solving techniques and process:
- Pseudocode: Pretty confident, it helps to build up the function and give a clue on what to search for when figuring something out.
- Trying something: Confident, I did this a lot - change something and press run, check result/error, change something else and repeat.
- Rubber ducky method: Confident - although it does feel a bit weird talking to yourself I found it helped me find spelling errors and missing brackets
- Reading error messages: Reasonably confident, using these and looking at what the tests were looking for helped a lot.
- Console.logging: Didn’t use this too much, but it was helpful to see what was happening at some points.
- Googling: Confident - was good for getting explanations and examples of some methods.
- Asking your peers for help: Confident, although I didn’t need to this sprint.
- Asking coaches for help: Same as above - I would have had I exhausted everything else.
- your process with reflection: Good - I did walk away for a break at some points and think about what was needed to get the function working.