STOP JUST CODING ā START THINKING LIKE A PROGRAMMER
Ever caught yourself staring at your screen, not because you donāt know how to code⦠but because you donāt know where to start? Yeah ā that moment when your code editor is open, your brainās buffering, and Stack Overflow suddenly looks like paradise š Hereās the truth: coding isnāt the hard part ā problem-solving is. Thatās what separates a ācoderā from a āprogrammer.ā And itās exactly what V. Anton Spraulās author of the book "Think Like a Programmer" drills into every developerās mind: stop jumping straight into syntax, and start building a systematic way of thinking. Below is only a small fraction of it wisdom š” HEREāS THE GAME PLAN FOR THINKING LIKE A PROGRAMMER 1ļøā£ ALWAYS HAVE A PLAN Donāt rush to code. Step back. Analyze. Write down what the program should do before touching the keyboard. The plan will evolve, but thinking before coding saves hours of debugging chaos later. 2ļøā£ RESTATE THE PROBLEM If you canāt explain the problem simply, you donāt understand it yet. Talk it out ā even to your water bottle (itās called rubber duck debugging š¦). Clarity is power. 3ļøā£ DIVIDE AND CONQUER Break big problems into smaller, digestible chunks. Solving five little tasks is better than battling one monster problem. Think Lego bricks, not skyscrapers. 4ļøā£ START WITH WHAT YOU KNOW Confidence builds clarity. Knock out the parts you understand first ā theyāll light up the path for the rest. 5ļøā£ REDUCE THE PROBLEM If it feels impossible, shrink it. Solve a smaller version first, then scale up. Complexity is conquered one layer at a time. 6ļøā£ LOOK FOR ANALOGIES AND EXPERIMENT Youāve solved something like this before ā find the pattern. Then play. Test ideas. Break things safely. Thatās how innovation starts. š§ THE REAL TAKEAWAY Programming is less about typing and more about thinking strategically. Itās not the code thatās powerful ā itās the mind behind it. So next time you face a bug, a blank page, or a brutal logic puzzle⦠pause, plan, break it down, and think like a programmer.