This is something I've forgot in the years I've spent working since University. There is a certain joy in hacking on data structures / input management and find

This is something I've forgot in the years I've spent working since University. There is a certain joy in hacking on data structures / input management and finding the exact patterns that will handle all of the error cases you've thought of. Anyone have any suggestions for priming myself to work on a problem without directions and finding a solution as you go along (exploratory programming)? The closest I've come lately is exploring the node.js API and working out a basic web server with auth, cookies, and some MVC structure.