"It turns out to be easier and faster to iterate from an existing but wrong solution, than to deduce a correct solution from scratch. Even if you have to occas

"It turns out to be easier and faster to iterate from an existing but wrong solution, than to deduce a correct solution from scratch. Even if you have to occassionally press the “clear” button to start over." This is what I was referring to. Yes, if you tackle coding projects that are challenging mostly by size and not by algorithmic difficulty, simply plowing ahead is the right attitude. But sometimes you will encounter real challenges, and for those you will need all the top-down design and logical tricks that you can muster. To the extent that my personal experience is relevant, for my PhD thesis I've designed and implemented a novel algorithm. I went through three non-functional versions before I realized that I actually needed to spell everything out on paper first, before writing a single line of code. After that, I was done in two weeks.