Algorithmic Problem Solving

When you are first start programming, solving problems can be difficult. Since the entire impetus for learning programming is to solve a multitude of problems with a computer, the difficulties can lead to frustration. However, in this course, we are going to approach a problem with a method that can help alleviate those issues. Join us as we develop our problem-solving toolkit!

[MUSIC] >> Hello and thank you for watching DevProTV, we're talking to Justin Dennison about algorithmic problem solving. So Justin, tell us about the course. >> The course is meant to allow to us think about how to plan. How to kind of grock, which is a terminology that means just fully understand a respective problem. And in this course, what we're gonna do is we're gonna take an approach of, well, how do I approach a problem? How do I algorithmically approach something? And that's up for debate. This is a little bit of a biased opinion here, so in this course. But with them, we'll have a series of projects where we have planning phase and a coding phase. So the planing will be let me draw, what do I know? How do these things work? Let's see if I can break it and it's more about understanding what's called the problem space. Instead of just going well, let me write some code here. So the entire goal is to solve actual problems though, they are small in nature by applying a process that should be applicable over a larger, more complex problem space. >> And Justin, who is this show targeted towards? >> This is someone who's maybe just getting started with programming, maybe wants to know a little bit more about. Maybe they programmed before, but they're like I'm having trouble figuring out what I'm supposed to do next. This show is to help those individuals say, I need to do thing X. How do I accomplish thing X? Well, I need to follow these kind of steps in order to okay, that's how I put all of these together. So the goal is to help people who are having trouble. Maybe they know a little bit, maybe they don't. How do I actually accomplish things that I have original ideas for that maybe I don't know where to get started or how to progress in some reproducible manner. >> Is there a certification available for the course? >> This is not a certification course. This is kind of one of those heady topics where we're gonna do a little bit of thinking. And by a little bit, I mean, a lot and then we're gonna make sure we have some drawing. I'm gonna try to show you my thought process, which maybe you might have to tweak for yourself and then we're going to do the application. As a result, it would be very hard to certify something like this. You're a certified algorithm problem solver. So this is more about getting better in order to move forward in your craft. >> And you've already kind of test on it, but what topics are covered in this show? >> So that the topics are mostly in an abstract sense planning and then actually implementing or coding. But along that, we're gonna be building a Caesar sign for it. We're gonna be making a title function. We're gonna look at how to wait for it or wait for it, figure out palindromes. There's a couple of other problems and these are small that I've picked, because they should be short to do. But they can have some issues that are nice to highlight. And well, there's a couple other things where we're going to hijack the Python system to give us some quick iteration times. So I try something. It's broke. It's not broke. So being able to do that, that fast feedback is imperative to know, am I on the right track? Or am I totally off base? >> Well, thank you, Justin. And if algorithmic problem solving sounds like a course, you would be interested in and you should be. Make sure to get all the episodes and see them in our course library. Thanks you very much for watching. And remember, a good DevPro is always learning. [MUSIC]