HACKER Q&A
📣 adawg4

Where did you find problems to solve?


I usually write stuff down and see what is the most pressing and frequent for a certain period of time once and a while


  👤 herodoturtle Accepted Answer ✓
I assume you mean in the context of software development?

I use vim as my IDE which automatically highlights the word "TODO" in bright colours when it is in a comment.

So I leave // TODO comments in various parts of our codebase that need attention later down the line - and I also append one or more asterisk symbols depending on how urgent it is, like so:

// TODO ** Refactor abc to do xyz.

Then from the Linux CLI I can "grep -R TODO *" in the codebase's top level directory to get a full list of items on my TODO list, and depending on the number of asterisks before each comment description, I know which item I need to prioritise.

Hope that helps!


👤 muzani
I live in a developing country. Taxes are a problem. Crime is a problem. Buying fresh chicken is a problem (which I actually tried to tackle with a startup)

👤 mustafa_pasi
Solving your own problems is all well and good, but I think that advice was more valid 10 to 15 years ago when there were more untapped opportunities.

My current philosophy is that you have to go seek opportunities. I am trained as a mathematician but I am thinking of getting into some high-tech area just to gain experience, get domain expertise, and hopefully find business opportunities. I'm considering robotics but not quite decided yet.


👤 meiraleal
I find it in frustration. If you are looking for problems to fix, you need to feel the pain, otherwise you will not know how to fix it.

👤 giantg2
My entire life is a problem

👤 el_dev_hell
Interesting question.

Honestly, I've never had trouble finding problems to solve (in life overall). Maybe one day I'll have a problem deficit and will need to go looking.

I try and focus on my most high impact problems and attack them. I attack problems in the normal engineer way (break it down, solve, solve, solve, break down further, solve, move up the problem tree).