Understanding The Problem Domain Is The Hardest Part Of Programming

A familiar problem

By creating a familiar problem domain, I found that both the tasks of me teaching a new technology and the viewer learning that technology were much easier, because it is very difficult to learn more than one thing at once.

Simply that by taking away the problem domain, or making it so trivial that it is easily understood, I am able to make both teaching and learning easier.

Why problem domains are hard

The big issue is that many problem domains are like a puzzle with a blurry picture or no picture at all.

Writing code is a lot like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. We put together code with the purpose of building components that we have taken out of the “bigger picture” of the problem domain.

The real world is a messy place. Many of the problem domains we face as programmers are difficult to understand and look completely different depending on your viewpoint.

As programmers, we also are often not given complete information about the problem domain, so we don’t even have the information we need to understand it.

Programming is easy if you understand the problem domain

It is very difficult to solve a problem before you know the question. It’s like buzzing in on Jeopardy before you hear the clue and shouting out random questions.

What can you do about it?

If understanding the problem domain is the hardest part of programming and you want to make programming easier, you can do one of two things:

1-Make the problem domain easier

2-Get better at understanding the problem domain

You can often make the problem domain easier by cutting out cases and narrowing your focus to a particular part of the problem.