Hear hear! The generalization of this is figuring out how to prioritize multiple problems. Deciding which problems to solve in what order, and how much time to

Hear hear! The generalization of this is figuring out how to prioritize multiple problems. Deciding which problems to solve in what order, and how much time to spend on each, is a difficult and important and never solved problem. But it’s quite valuable to practice and budget your time. This might sound different from understating the problem before coding, but it’s really almost the same thing, taking time to think about the approach carefully before diving in, making sure the requirements will be met, etc. Prioritizing multiple problems is very similar to planning the steps of solving a single problem. Maybe the main difference with the higher level prioritizing is that prioritizing has to be revisited periodically and/or continuously. Working in a software company, this is what the best PMs do really well, they figure out which features and bugs to work on that make the most difference, and they understand when to listen to the programmers and let them refactor things without making public-facing progress, and also when not to.