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It's not really along the lines of IDE, tools, etc., but one thing that's been helpful for me is to bounce ideas off of someone, even if you're trying to rememb
by yladiz 10y ago
It's not really along the lines of IDE, tools, etc., but one thing that's been helpful for me is to bounce ideas off of someone, even if you're trying to remember something, and the act of explaining or working through my thought processes helps me pieces together "mental puzzles". This is also known as rubber duck debugging.
I've had multiple instances of talking to a coworker about a topic, and halfway through the topic I realize what I was going for and cut it off, saying, "I got it! Thanks for being my rubber duck."
- Mikhail_Edoshin 10y agoSame here, except that I write it down. For each project I have a text file called "TODO" that is always open and if I need to decide on something, I usually write it down as a task. I normally start the task description with a verb and these tasks start with "Think". First I quickly write down the issue I'm facing, then write "Variants:" and list all the different ways of solving this issue. I do not evaluate them as I do this, just get pen them down. And once I'm over with variants, I write the final decision and rationale. (I once read about problem-solving therapy that is used in cognitive-behavioral approach and this is almost the same pattern. It sounds obvious, but few people really follow the steps in practice. It's also similar to brainstorming.) In many cases I come up with more variants that I initially had in mind and quite often I end up choosing the variant that didn't appear promising on the first look.