5 steps to solve a coding problem.

Stairs going up

I’m not new to problems and trying to solve them, my previous career was in the live events industry so quite often these would happen in the worst possible moments, but I am new to code related problems. Often when hitting a wall with the issue I am facing, I have found these steps have helped get me back on track.

1. My initial go-to is probably everyone’s favourite, Google. Someone at some point in their career will have no doubt had the same problem as you so more than likely you’ll find your answer here. When I do a Google search which could be an error from the IDE, or another coding related issue. I add the language at the end of the search so I find the correct answer suited to me.

google search for playing audio in Swift

2. My next point is usually an outcome from the first step, Stack overflow. A great place to find answers to problems that we all experience. My goal is to finally help someone else with a problem! For now, until I am more experienced, I’m happy it exists to help me. Another great place of course is Medium. I have found some good answers and explanations to many queries here.

3. If you find the answer, use this code and see if it fixes your issue. I always write out the code and refrain from copy and pasting the answer. This helps me to understand what is being written.

4. So you got the code and you think it could work, but it doesn’t quite fit. Maybe the variables have different names. You’ll need to edit the code to suit your needs. This also helps me make sense of what I am writing.

5. Once the answer is found, the best thing to do is to understand the code we have just implemented, so generally I will look up the docs to find out. It’s often quicker to just continue in building the application, but if you find this stumbling block again, you will again be stuck. Understanding the code you implement can help you remember for the future.

So that’s it. These steps have helped me many times, and will help in the future. It’s not always this simple though. 5 steps may seem easy, but it’s not always a quick process.

Thanks for reading! I hope this helps someone out there. It helps me to write things down so I understand them better.