comment on

You will like to read this:

How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method (Princeton Science Library). By Polya, George.

As for how to develop the skills you mention: just work through this book - it's challenging, but worth it.

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Second Edition. By Abelson, Harold / Sussman, Gerald Jay / Sussman, Julie.

Conceptually, I think programming can be regarded as problem solving by means of symbol manipulation. And yes, I think the essence of programming (as Fred Brook characterizes it in his classic essay "No Silver Bullet" (see The Mythical Man-Month : Essays On Software Engineering. By Brooks, Frederick P. Jr.)) is reducing complexity into manageable chunks.

In fact, there is a very easy and common way to use this method when coding: Just write down your thoughts on how to solve the problem in English with some pseudo-code (while loops etc.) to improve clarity. Comment out what you have written. Hack it apart and elaborate on each part in code. You get a good high-level structure, and comments for free.

Christian Lemburg
Brainbench MVP for Perl
http://www.brainbench.com

In reply to RE: Prgramming vs. Coding by clemburg
in thread Prgramming vs. Coding by extremely

Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:
<code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>
Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.


Keep It Simple, Stupid
	PerlMonks