In her book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, Angela Duckworth interviewed dozens of high achievers and noted the importance of deliberate practice in their successes. Below is how Duckworth describes the way experts practice:

First, they set a stretch goal, zeroing in on just one narrow aspect of their overall performance. Rather than focus on what they already do well, experts strive to improve specific weaknesses. They intentionally seek out challenges they can’t yet meet.

This article will identify fundamental strengths crucial to software development and design specific routines to get you into coding shape.

Baby Steps

One of the best skills you can acquire as a fledgling developer is repeatedly breaking down a problem until it is simple to solve. You can hone this skill by following test-driven development rigorously, which helps you get into the habit of focusing on one change at a time.

An ideal exercise for building up your muscle to make incremental changes involves implementing a divide-and-conquer algorithm such as the Fibonacci sequence or prime factorization. You start by finding and solving the base case and then gradually expanding your program to handle more challenging edge cases.

Pay attention to how each new case prompts you to change your solution. What would it take to turn an if statement into a loop? What would force you to introduce a for loop instead of a while loop? Take the time to consider the least amount of work you can put in to solve the problem.

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