Foundational Thinking

Hey Codecademy fam!

I would like to form a habit of thinking algorithmically/computationally when tackling problems whether it be in CS or general life problems, a system of reference I can drill to build a strong foundation going forward.

I’ve seen so much information out there referencing books, cs50, etc and would like to ask a community I trust where I may find a reference to a particular system like this that again can be drilled and not just read and left in the back of my mind.

Thank you all ahead of time, and happy holidays :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

I think at the end of the day it’s a mentality. Every idea one comes into contact with can be interacted with on a spectrum of passive to proactive. It’s up to the individual to find the right balance of engagement per idea.

There’s a lot of things to consider, but one I personally try to think about is to have a high filter for quality when having few references. Which for me means, the less I have experience on a subject, the more I need to look at foundational reference material/thought (and exclude uncertain noise). While if I’m very confident on a topic, I will gladly allow for a lot of divergent/experimental opinions in the field.

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Creating UML diagrams is very useful for me, it’s the first thing I was taught before I wrote my first “Hello World!”. It allows you to break down processes into their most basic functions, from there you can write small pieces of code to put it all together. As you use it, you won’t need to break things down into small chunks, you’ll be able to abstract bigger things in your head.

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This was the kind of answer I was looking for! I will be looking into this more though I must ask as you’re proficient in UML already perhaps what resources you used to develop this skill(edx, coursera, youtube, etc).

Even if your original statement is all you have time for I am heavily grateful you took the time to share :grinning:

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Pen and paper… that was back in '99. Also used Visio every now and then, but I’m more old school.

You can take anything and write a UML diagram for it, lots of practice is required. It’s better if someone reviews it for you until you get the hang of it, nowadays very few companies require such a thing to support their engineering efforts.

There are a few tools out there for it, haven’t taken the time to look for a good one. I wrote this a while back, it’s very basic: There's more to this than just writing code

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