Many people still do not appreciate how essential quality software is for the maintenance of our modern society. As a result, some people are shocked to find out that there are more than 26 million software developers throughout the world. On top of that, the software development industry is now adding about 1 million new engineers every single year!
With so many software engineers, it is more important than ever that they learn how to stand out when it comes to things like problem-solving. The right problem-solving skills can help a software engineer with less technical knowledge outcompete those with more technical knowledge.
Many software engineers trust in experience itself to train essential problem-solving skills in them. However, you can learn most things more quickly when you focus on them. So what are the most important problem-solving skills for a software engineer to develop?
Read on to learn all about the most powerful skills that can help software engineers solve problems!
1. Simplification Skills for Software Developers
There is a powerful idea that states that no one on earth knows how to make a modern pencil. Although this seems impossible, it makes sense when you realize that people contribute to the creation of pencils one step at a time. There is no single individual who is familiar with every step in the pencil creation process.
A similar principle applies to software development. The vast majority of professional software is so complicated that it is impossible to conceptualize all at once. At most, a software engineer can expect to understand each constituent piece as they consider it.
However, even that is optimistic. In most cases, no one fully understands every part of a powerful piece of software. That just goes to demonstrate how complicated modern software tools can be.
So what does this tell us about how a software engineer should approach problem-solving? One of the most essential skills for a software engineer to have is the ability to simplify.
Most of your tasks will be highly complex. Learning to break them down into small constituent pieces will allow you to make impossible tasks seem manageable.
This advice applies to all kinds of problems, not just those in software. However, in software, you often have to break things down into pieces much smaller than you would in normal life.
Even after breaking a complex task down into pieces, the individual pieces may seem complicated. At that point, a skilled software engineer has to be prepared to iterate. Break down the sub-pieces into more sub-pieces.
You can continue doing this until the single next step in front of you seems clear. In many cases, finishing that one first step will provide just enough insight for you to proceed to the next step, and on from there.
2. Improve Problem-Solving With Parallel Thinking
Some software engineers excel at simplification but then fall into another trap. Breaking things down into steps sometimes causes people to focus on completing those steps in order. However, that is often the wrong order when it comes to writing code.
For one thing, finishing one step might require you to wait. When that happens, for whatever reason, it is more efficient to move on to other steps. Skilled software engineers are sometimes working on several different pieces of a complex task in parallel.
This may sound daunting, but it can increase efficiency. Most people don’t bother to organize themselves explicitly when they follow this kind of strategy.
You can make it much easier to execute this strategy by writing down in a separate document the steps that you intend to complete. Then you can highlight each step that you are working on in parallel with the others.
3. Be Judicious With Abstract Software Developer Skills
Software engineers learn to abstract. Abstraction is one of the most powerful abilities of intelligence. It is one of the things that sets humans apart from animal species.
However, it is important to be judicious with abstraction. Some software engineers think that it is always better to abstract as much as possible. More sophisticated engineers understand the importance of using abstraction in the appropriate amount.
As you analyze potential software tasks and abstract them, make sure to take a break every so often to check if it seems productive to continue doing so. In the beginning, you may not have any sense of whether it is more productive or not.
However, as you remember to ask yourself this question, you will start to develop a sense of when abstraction is helping versus when it is wasting time. This is an essential soft skill for software engineers.
4. Improve Problem-Solving With Recycling
Sometimes, inexperienced software engineers do not understand how others are able to be so productive. In some cases, the answer is that experienced engineers are willing to copy when inexperienced engineers are not.
Software development is so complex that there is no question that it is important to recycle. New engineers quickly get over any ideas of writing everything from scratch every time. You might as well skip over that process and start reusing code right away.
5. Software Developers Think in Terms of Data
Experienced software engineers learn to think of software as a tool for transforming data. Data starts out raw and unorganized. Then, it is processed by the first part of the software tool.
In most cases, it will then proceed through several other transformations before outputting some kind of specialized output. When a software task seems complicated, it often helps to think through how possible data transformations might help you move from initial inputs all the way to desired outputs.
Understand the Most Important Problem-Solving Skills for a Software Engineer
We hope learning about the most important problem-solving skills for a software engineer to learn has been helpful for you. Many software engineers focus only on specific technical knowledge. However, maximizing your career development means learning soft skills at the same time.
To learn more about how to improve all kinds of skills for success as a software engineer, take a look through our other articles!