Ask HN: I've learned a programming language – how do I solve problems with code?

See '180 websites in 180 days' project. http://jenniferdewalt.com

Hi from Tent :-) https://cphuntington97.cupcake.is

If you're uninterested, please ignore, but here is something I want that might make an educational project:

A list of English words and/or phrases that are "phonetically contained" within Spanish words and/or phrases (and vice versa). For example, the English words 'cone,' 'tea,' and 'go' are phonetically contained within the Spanish word 'contigo.' (I'm trying to write songs in both languages that converge at key points). You might be able to do it with a https://www.wiktionary.org dump.

If you want a process that takes you from problem to product I recommend one I have used in developing several real world solutions, described by Freeman & Pryce in the book "Growing Object-Oriented Software - Guided by Tests". Allthough the book uses an object oriented paradigm and Java (none of which I particularly recommend) the process described in the book's first few chapters is solid and makes quality software development more predictable - and less of an art. (For those of you in the know, but who haven't read the book, this is about TDD, London style, (outside-in) with a high level of automation (continuous delivery).)

When I went to grad school, my career had been programming, and I'd done a lot of it for some years. Two applied math profs were starting a computer science course and asked me what good lessons I'd learned, and I answered. The answer remains current:

A programmer stands between a real problem and a computer.

The computer does only what operations it is carefully instructed to do and no more understands the real problem than the chef's knife of a good cook understands cooking.

So, the work of the programmer is to take the real problem and see how to use the computer to solve it.

For this work, as a first step, if only to make the work easier for the programmer, get a first list of the data inputs for the problem and the data outputs. Yes the code for a Web page is a special case of this first step.

Then outline how the program will take the inputs and generate the outputs.

Here likely will need to define storage for the inputs, say, some or all of variables, arrays, data structures, instances of object-oriented classes, database tables, etc.

Then move on to the work manipulating the input data to get the desired output data. In the case of a Web page or any software with a graphical user interface (GUI), also will want to outline what the output will look like on the user's screen.

Then for the manipulations of the data, use the old strategy of divide and conquer, that is, break the work down into largely or entirely independent pieces of work. People have been doing work of wide variety this way for centuries, likely back to the pyramids and the first boats that could cross an ocean. For each such piece, have in the software a section of code, subroutine, or function. The work of such a piece may be further subdivided.

In the end, want each such piece of code, section, subroutine, ..., to be small, to have a purpose that is easy to explain briefly, that is fairly easy to debug, by desk-checking (that is, careful critical reading), running test cases, etc., and with logic that is fairly easy to create, explain, and follow.

This division of the work should be, at least intuitively, robust to small changes in the real world problem to be solved. That is, the division should be for a problem a little more general and complicated than the one actually given; how much more is a matter of judgment, but a small change in the problem statement should still be a small change in the software!

Next, in the division, exploit the scope of names rules in the programming language to help the software pieces be independent.

Next, remember that at least one human needs to be able to understand the source code and that "When a program is written, it is understood only by the programmer and God. Six months later, only God." So, humans need to be able to understand the code, for small projects, just by reading the source code and not needing additional documentation outside the source code.

Next, remember that humans communicate in natural languages, e.g., English, hopefully with sentences, paragraphs, etc. Remember that, no matter how much we might wish and intend otherwise, the source code of software is not in a natural language. Yes we can use mnemonic spelling for the various names we choose and use, and such mnemonic naming does help someone trying to read and understand the code, but such mnemonic names are still a long way from English. Bluntly, as information for a human reader, the code doesn't really mean anything or is likely a puzzle problem to solve to guess the meaning.

So, net, have to document the code, that is, explain the code to a human, explain with English, essentially with sentences, paragraphs, etc.

Here is an example of a technique in source code documentation: My project now is a new Web site; the source code for the Web pages is in Microsoft's Visual Basic .NET making use of the .NET Framework (collection of object-oriented class), SQL Server, ASP.NET, and IIS. For this work, I have 5000+ Web pages of documentation, nearly all from Microsoft's Web site MSDN.

So, my code makes use of a lot of classes, functions, etc. from those 5000+ pages of documentation, and some of those classes, etc. do a lot and need some good documentation. So, in my source code, when I use one of those classes, functions, etc., I insert in my source code a comment with the title of an appropriate Web page of documentation along with a tree name of the Web page on a hard disk on my computer. So, when reading such source code, one keystroke in my favorite text editor (which is what I use to write code) will display the Web page so that I can confirm that my source code is doing what I intend.

Since the code is awash in symbols, good examples of how to explain code are in good texts in subjects based heavily on symbols. So, can explain code much like a good freshman physics text explains Newton's second law or Coulomb's law or how a good freshman calculus text explains conic sections or differentiation. E.g., for English readers, mathematics is still written in English; then the symbols are names, that is nouns.

In large projects, the documentation may be hundreds of pages. But essentially always there is documentation as source code comments in the source code.

Then, six months later God, the programmer, and others will all be able to understand the code!

My view is that currently the biggest bottleneck in practical computing is poor documentation. Sorry 'bout that. YMMV!

Great question.

Problems are solved by tools. Powerful tools can be built with code.

So try first to think about what kind of tool would be helpful for you. How could a computer help you accomplish something that you couldn't do yourself on pen+paper.

One example I like was I was making designs for various sports teams, and I liked the idea of word clouds, but it seems like too much work. So I built a javascript app that counted words in wikipedia articles and built wordclouds form that.

It's a cool project, but the original seed didn't comde form thinking 'what problem can I solve with code' it came from trying to do something new, then thinking if that specific problem could be done with code.