I got stuck on a simple problem back when I used to work in a customer
facing role. Two people came in at the same time for an afternoon
appointment - they had been double booked. We were understaffed at the
time so noone could see one of the extra appointments. I told the
clients that I would see the first person who arrived and if it took
longer than half an hour for the appointment, the second customer would
have to be re-booked. I tried to rush through the first appointment for
the first person so the second person wouldn't have to wait as long. I
found that it ended up stressing me out and I didn't want the first
customer to feel like I had rushed through the info. Half an hour into
the appointment and still had a long way to go, I went to the front desk
and told the client that was still waiting that unfortunately they had
to be re-booked as it was going over the time allocated. I felt
frustrated throughout this process and learnt from this that if it
happened again, I would just re-book one of the appointments straight
away so not to waste anyone else's time.
I feel like I elegantly solved the 'daBee' problem. In this problem, I
was faced with the task to split a string (sequence of characters that
consists of either text, numbers, or symbols) into individual words and
filter out words with a 'buzz' sound! I watched one of the Foundations
videos that Gerard had posted and he spoke about the woof tests. In the
test at the end 'Everything, Everywhere, All at once' (the last test on
the page), it tested you on all of these skills together. I practised
the test myself and then was able to problem solve from there and apply
it to the 'daBee' challenge! It helped seeing how an example was solved.
I found it much easier to apply it to my problem.
• Pseudocode – I am still getting used to this. I did this in some of
the later challenges in JS Kata. It definitely helps when I do it as
it’s nice to see it all written out and breaking it down into smaller
steps.
• Trying something – this was my go to method. I always wanted to see if
I got the answer right. It was a good and a bad thing as sometimes I
would pass a couple of the tests in one category but there would still
be one of the tests failing. I got there in the end with trial and
error.
• Rubber ducky method – I haven’t used this technique yet!
•Reading error messages – this was helpful to see. I would research the
error message and look at forums to see where to go from there.
•Console.logging – I did this in the built-in methods challenge. It was
helpful to see it written out.
• Googling – I feel pretty confident with this and normally from Google
search results will go on the MDN web docs or W3Schools page to see
explanations.
• Asking your peers for help – I asked a question in Tech Questions and
my peers were supportive trying to help.
• Asking coaches for help – I feel pretty confident with this. I have
had a couple of calls with Johnny where he was very helpful explaining
what I had to do to get the solution. I also popped on a call with
Gerard and Lari where they helped me with one of my issues in the
challenge.
• Improving your process with reflection – I spend the least amount of
time on my reflections. I feel like I’m okay with this process. I’ll
update it as soon as I’ve done the topic so it’s fresh in my mind.
I was spending too long on a problem and I thought the solution was
probably really simple so I stalled until I felt like I wasn't going to
get the answer on my own. Once I had asked, I wish I had asked sooner!