Become a Better Developer by Solving Micro Problems
In my last post, I talked about how isolating the code allows you to focus on the main problem and ignore the complexity associated with the rest of the application. In this post, I will talk about how a large problem can easily be solved by dividing it into much smaller (micro) problems.
Implementing Micro Tasks
Let’s say you are building an application which allows the user to authenticate using username and password. You are responsible for the complete piece, which includes the database, server as well as the user interface. If you look at the problem as a single unit, you may get overwhelmed due to the scale of the task. I have even witnessed some of my students completely freeze and not even able to take a single step forward, because they become paralyzed due to the mammoth size of the task.
The path forward is to break problems into smaller, micro problems. There is no hard and fast rule of how small a micro problem should be, but it should be definitely smaller than the original task. Here are few examples of micro tasks for building the login user interface:
- Place required web elements on the page
- Validate TextFields for username and password
- Display validation messages
