819
Stare at it.
(mander.xyz)
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
I find for coding problems it's actually better to walk away and let it tick over in your mind.
You'll often get a shower thought type moment.
That works for pretty much anything.
Get up and do anything else for a while. School teaches us to sit at our desks and work on the problem. Stop acting like a sixth grader.
This got me fired from the daycare
You were just staring at the kids. You were supposed to be changing diapers and feeding them. Insert obvious misunderstanding here.
One place I worked had a small park, so sometimes I'd go for a lap or two to think something through - the fresh air, mild exercise, change of scenery and lack of distractions wroked wonders.
Nothing more enchanting than when the answer to your coding problem literally comes to you in a dream. Had an array issue in C++ where I literally woke up saying "I don't need a ghost array to search after all is said and done, it's already sorted!"
Me, staring at my code, fiddling around, retrying it over and over: "WHY WON'T YOU WORK, DAMMIT?"
Me, late at night, trying to sleep, suddenly wide awake: "Oh that's why!"
Me, the next morning, staring at my code: "...what was it again?"
Once, the answer to a problem that was stumping me came while driving in the middle of nowhere at 01:00am back from a weekend trip.