Problem Solving Checklist

I was recently working on a problem from a tutorial. The problem was basic: write some code that will build a Google search URL. It had the following requirements:

• take a string to use for the search term
• specify the google domain to search
• use the ‘num’ parameter to limit the number of search results
• use the ‘as_qdr’ parameter to limit the date range

I only had a limited amount of time to work on the problem (real-life constraints, not a limit imposed by the tutorial). So, I jumped in and created a function that took all the required parameters. “This is an easy problem”, I thought. “I can get this done quickly!”

At the end of my time, my code didn’t compile. I had parameters that were not used and I had made a mistake in my understanding of the as_qdr parameter.

Instead of jumping in and trying to solve the problem all at once, I should have broken it into steps. I know this, but I got caught by my own ego. I thought the problem was simple and I could solve it quickly.

So, here is a reminder to myself on how to approach problems, no matter how easy they may seem:

• Is it possible to manually test the requirements/solution?
  • In this case, it would be to try an URL in the browser. Example: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cat+pictures&num=50&as_qdr=y
• Pick one feature to implement.
  • In this case, there were four features: search term, domain, num, and as_qdr
  • For this problem, the search term is the best place to start. The other 3 requirements refine the results of the search term
• Investigate and question any constraints.
• Once that feature is working repeat the steps for the remaining features.

The benefits of this approach are:

• It breaks the task into manageable pieces.
• I always have something to show for my work. So, even if I run out of time, I have hopefully implemented one of the features.

It is better to have a working solution for some of the requirements rather than a partial implementation for all the requirements. Why? Because if this were a real-world task I would have a product that I could potentially release. It may not have all the features, but it has some and they work. This is in contrast to having a bit of everything implemented and nothing working.

Hopefully, I will remember next time!