“Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.” ~ Rene Descartes, French mathematician and philosopher
Problems trip us up because they typically have many layers. We get so caught up in their tangled webs that we can’t see our way clear of them. We try to solve the whole thing at once. If we can break a problem down into pieces and then address each piece individually, we gain confidence by removing each roadblock and eventually the light at the end of the tunnel begins to shine through.
Learning to program has taught me this lesson at every turn. In programming, we have a goal – the thing we’re trying to build. To get there, we have to break the problem down into pieces and address each small piece line by line. The collection of all of those lines yield our desired result.
The same is true for any problem in our lives. They’re all made of tiny problems stacked on top of one another. Start where you are, see where you want to go, and chart all of the small steps to get from here to there. It’s a sure path to unraveling any challenge that ails us. And while you’re at it, why not learn to code?
Christa Avampato 