I’ve found that development is beginning to remind me of middle school science. Every once in a while something comes across my plate that I don’t see any way to accomplish. But before saying no right way (and before saying yes), I sit down and think about what needs to be done. To repeat an over-used cliche, I need to think outside of the box.

Recently at work, I’ve come up with a few hypotheses as to how something could be accomplished. I setup a small test folder and come up with the code for what I think it will take. Like middle school, I begin an experiment to find out if my educated guess was good or not – exposing the unknown attributes and exploring the interactions of elements (like chemicals). The result are tested in several control environments, i.e. various web browsers, different situations, etc. Then, I document the results.

The only thing my science teacher did that my coworkers do not do is make me write up a paper. I simply show them my results and they get excited, no grading necessary. If it works it works, if not I either did it wrong or I tell them it’s impossible.

It isn’t entirely the math in math class that you need when you get older (you need to know how to do your taxes, but you don’t need the quadratic equation on a daily basis). It was the fact that you had to learn about patterns, and how structure can affect the results. Numbers appear to be so simple yet they are used to explain everything around us, so you need to know how they relate to each other. It’s the same with programming – you cannot write a program without an understanding of order and logic.

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