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Ask HN: At what point do you give up on an iteration of code and start again?

1 points by all2 ↗ HN
I'm knee deep in a homework assignment and the cruft I built up to "make things easy" is now just complicating things.

As above. When do I start from scratch?

1 comment

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devplusops
Try not to get bogged down into syntax issues. If this is homework/you are just starting out, you have two challenges:

* Identifying an algorithm to solve the problem

* Expressing the algorithm you've identified

Work out your algorithm in pseudocode/flowcharts/in your head.

Once you've clearly figured out what program you are trying to write, re-evaulate. Maybe you can slowly change your program piece-by-piece over to your intended strategy, or maybe a rewrite should be easy.

I guess what I'm saying is this: figure out what problem you have that is blocking you. It will be a lot easier to move past it once you know which part(s) of the task you are finding challenging.