I don't agree with the premise of "we think we're special either", but Come up with a solution to a problem before you start writing code, and think about whic

I don't agree with the premise of "we think we're special either", but Come up with a solution to a problem before you start writing code, and think about which parts of the system that solution will impact. Divide the solution you came up with into small chunks, so you can take them one at a time. This makes a lot of sense. I see junior programmers flying by the seat of their pants without a plan too often - I do it too. I find that stepping away from the IDE/code editor (not looking at code) and thinking about the problem helps a lot. That could also involve a piece of paper and pencil, or a text editor and just writing train of thought stuff. But the key is not to be looking at the code. His second piece of advice about dividing the solution up into smaller chunks, I also apply to debugging. When someone comes to me with a debugging issue, the first thing I ask "ok, how do we simplify the problem? How do we get rid some of the extraneous details?" And then keep on iterating over that - keep on simplifying.