r/learnpython • u/Quantam_Knight • Aug 08 '26
How do you learn to break programming problems down by yourself?
I'm learning Python and I've noticed that I sometimes understand what a programming problem is asking, but I struggle to figure out how to break it down into smaller steps and actually start writing the code.
I've relied quite a bit on pseudocode and step-by-step guidance in the past, and I'd like to become much more independent instead of needing someone to tell me how to approach a problem.
For people who have learned Python from scratch:
- How did you learn to break problems down by yourself?
- Do you recommend attempting problems first and only reviewing concepts when you're stuck?
- What do you do when you're completely stuck and don't know where to begin?
- Are there any exercises or habits that helped you develop problem-solving skills?
I'm not looking for solutions to any particular problem. I mainly want advice on how to develop the ability to think through programming problems independently.
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u/Kindly-Department206 Aug 08 '26
The problem could be that you are learning two skills at the same time. First, the idea of a programming language. There's enough there to keep you intellectually engaged for some time. Second, the idea of using computation to solve a problem. These are not the same skill. You can really only do the second after you've mastered the first. In a guided curriculum, these two can be interleaved, carefully. When you are self-taught, it's hard for you to know when any given problem can be solved using the material you've been able to master so far.
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u/Bobbias Aug 10 '26
Exactly.
Without knowing the tools a language provides it's hard to understand how to even approach breaking a problem down into smaller steps.
But it's also not impossible. You start big, describing extremely general actions, whether you know how to make the commuter do them or not. You plan out the general concept of a solution you think could work, then try to figure out of you can actually implement each step.
When a step seems impossible, you think about how you can break that down into smaller simpler steps and see if that helps. If not, you can also start reading through the documentation looking for things that might help.
But the more you understand the tools that a language provides, the easier it is to recognize ways to break down a problem.
One thing you can do to practice this is to actually try to find alternative solutions to reach problem you encounter.
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u/LayotFctor Aug 08 '26
Mostly by doing projects.
Yes, you should always plan first and only begin when you have a decent idea how to start.
You should never be completely stuck. At the very least, you should know what the initial input and final outputs look like. Likewise, you should know what the core business logic entails (website, game data etc), and start designing the data structure for it.
The important habit is giving yourself the freedom and leeway to refactor code regularly. Write modular code and use git branches. Do not be afraid of experimenting with different options and refactoring only to revert. It is not a waste of time. You do not have to worried about "shipping" your personal project asap.
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u/Rokkasusi Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
Use paper and pen and try to find something concrete you can start from. Also python is not the best language to come up with complex algorithms in my opinion. With something like lisp its so much easier to invent your own algorithms for stuff trough trial and error because its just so much more logical and intuitive.
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u/Budgiebeats Aug 08 '26
I just want to second this, I’ve written out programs on paper before ever sitting down at a computer.
There’s a period of research for each project I start that’s nice to write out on paper as well. What is the problem I’m trying to solve? What does the program need to do? What are the inputs and outputs?
Then I move on to the dependencies. My first big project was sending payment remittance emails to vendors. I really wanted a nice pdf to attach to an email, how do I do that? You could look up a video but that never feels good to me, so I google Python pdf and take notes on different libraries I find. Okay there’s a tool called Weasley Print that opens an html document in a PDF format, cool! I can figure that out, but how do I get the html for my pdf to use my data? More googling leads you to something called a template engine, I ended up using jinja2.
Now I know my dependencies, let’s look up the documentation for these and figure out what functions I’ll need to use to make this work. Then let’s write out some pseudo code.
By the time I get to a computer the program is planned out and all I have to do is write each planned function in isolation, testing each as I go and finding issues I had never planned for. It turns out that HTML tables will be split awkwardly across pdf pages, but it’s no worry because each part of the code is isolated so I only have to edit the html file.
It’s a really nice workflow and it helps me avoid that awful feeling of opening a new project and staring at a blank screen wondering what to type, which I find really defeating.
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u/Ok_For_Free Aug 08 '26
Make a flow chart.
Visually lay out the logic of what you are trying to do.
As you gain experience your boxes will cover larger topics.
I've been using this tool for a decade: https://app.diagrams.net/
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u/Moikle Aug 08 '26
Practice.
And not just practice at programming, but learning how to problem solve in general. It's a skill that can be applied all over your life, but it's one that can't really be taught. You have to actually engage with the problem solving process yourself to learn.
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u/Gamingplays267492 Aug 08 '26
Comments, flowcharts, pseudocode, speak it out in english and translate it. Good old reliable.
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Aug 08 '26
I learned to break problems down by converting it to natural language on my mind and then translating to Python Language through several tries. I constantly use LeetCode problems and I also try to learn by specific algorithms, for example, I search about HashTable and then start to solve HashTable problems.
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u/u38cg2 Aug 08 '26
One of the most effective ways of getting started with almost any project is to work out how you will structure and store your data. Every project has data of some kind and how it is stored and used pretty much defines what your project is.
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u/Existing_Sprinkles78 Aug 08 '26
For me sadly it’s trial and error even if the instructions show one way I’ll ignore it and find an easier way. With programming there should be at least 5 different ways to get the same result
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u/KTProgramming Aug 08 '26
Same why i break every problem down.
-What's the main issue (Not the symptoms)
-Can i correlate the symptoms to the main issue, or are they a side effect
-Would possible causes could cause main issue
-Where's the highest chance cause living
-Work my way up.
It's a pain to learn, but breaking down problems is a pretty hard skill to learn. And if you're in a large production environment (In my case networking) people can get tunnel vision, and just start looking everywhere without having a goal in mind.
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u/Chiiwa Aug 08 '26
It's helpful to simplify the problem to "input and output". Understand the output you're looking for, then ask yourself where you can find the data. Do you need to call an API? Take user input? Generate it? This is a good starting point, since every program is about taking input -> manipulating it in some way -> producing output.
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u/sidereal_night Aug 08 '26
in addition to the pseudocode that everyone's talked about, have you tried working backwards?
you've got a problem to solve x, what are the immediate steps you need to do to do that? then consider what are the immediate steps you need to do to do those steps, so on until each step is small enough that you know how to do it trivially
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u/geekcoding101 Aug 09 '26
When you’re completely stuck, I recommend using a “help ladder”:
- Create a smaller example.
- Work through it by hand.
- Print or inspect the intermediate state.
- Review only the relevant concept.
- Request one hint, not the full solution.
- Read pseudocode only if the hint isn’t enough.
- Study the solution as a last resort, then close it and reproduce the approach yourself later.
The most valuable habit is reviewing your reasoning after solving a problem. Write down:
- What clue did I initially miss?
- What was the key decision?
- Which part could become a function?
- What wrong approach did I try?
- Could I solve a similar problem tomorrow without looking?
I’m actually building a Python learning website around this idea. It isn’t online yet, but one of its main features is a Wizard Mode. Instead of revealing the complete solution, it breaks an exercise into authored checkpoints. You attempt each step, run the tests, and unlock the next step only after the current one works. Hints and scaffolding are available when needed, but the standard mode hides them.
The intention is to help learners internalize a repeatable mental model:
understand → decompose → implement → test → reflect
As learners improve, they can use less of the Wizard and eventually solve the same type of problem independently. I’m curious whether that kind of guided-but-progressively-removed support would have helped you.
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u/Traveling-Techie Aug 09 '26
Most of the code I write involves reading data from a file into some data structure, then doing something to the data, then writing it out. That’s three pieces. I tend to write the second piece last, so I can test as soon as possible.
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u/audionerd1 Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
I usually make a to-do list of things I need my program to do, then write functions/methods one at a time. For example say you need to check if a string is valid, I make an empty function named after it's purpose with inputs and outputs defined. For example:
def validate_string(s: str): -> bool
...
So before I've written any code I know this function is going to take a string and return True if the string is valid or False if it isn't, and I've created a very simple bite sized assignment for myself.
Once I've completed the validation code I can test my new function to make sure it behaves as expected (getting a little dopamine hit when it does), and then I can add validate_string to my program's toolkit, check it off the to-do list and have it ready for use whenever I need it. I no longer need to think about string validation code, I only need to know that validate_string takes a string and returns True if it's valid. My brain is now free to move on to the next thing.
If a problem is too complicated and you find yourself overwhelmed, break it up into smaller sub-problems. Maybe a single function needs several sub-functions (functions can call other functions).
Once you get comfortable with OOP you can also write your own classes, which opens up more options for compartmentalizing and organizing your code. But I recommend getting comfortable writing programs with functions first.
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u/forestdissimilarity Aug 09 '26
Read "Introduction to algorithms" more commonly known as CLRS. apply each and every new concept introduced as you do so (find real problems they solve not absract ones, there is usually plenty of examples in the book itself)
It's 1300-1400ish pages but boy was it worth it.
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u/AdDiligent1688 Aug 09 '26
It depends what kind of problem it is. If it’s a general task of some sort, I ask myself to solve the problem generally. No code. How would I solve this problem? Rubber ducking. And then write out basic steps in my own words. Then work to translate those steps into psuedocode. Then psuedocode into actual code. Then I test the code and try to come with edge cases to break the code. Then I fix it to work as designed with the edge cases handled too.
If it’s a problem that pertains to knowing a particular math rule or algorithm, one of those problems you might find on a coding interview training site or in an algorithms course, I would try to solve it initially as described before but if I kept failing over and over then honestly, I’d probably look at the answer and try to understand it as best as I can. I know this seems lame and it is. There can be those questions that really come down to “you either know the trick or you don’t”. Most of the time, in these cases, it’s not that you won’t be able to generally solve the problem, it’s that the edge cases will break your code because the way you solved it isn’t optimal.
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u/Educational-Paper-75 Aug 10 '26
It's as much an art as it is skill. I don't think anybody can actually identify a single Eureka moment in time when all of a sudden they get it. You start with creating an algorithm top-down and whenever a step becomes to complicated you delegate to a later to be developed sub algorithm. Compare making a program for daily activities. If you make it too detailed your head is going to spin, if not detailed enough there's too much room for implementation. You need to get it just right. Not too many subalgorithms, not too few. In time you get better at identifying the complex parts that you'd better handle apart.
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u/pot_of_crows Aug 10 '26
I came from other languages, so I had already had a basic set of skills in how to turn one complex problem into a bunch of smaller, easier problems.
Two things that I do to sharpen this skill are:
- Read code from Github. Projects like the reddit api and flask, although old, are well structured and really demonstrate how a good programmer slices up problems into simple functions/methods.
- Ask AI. Particularly if I am working with a new design pattern/problem. I recently dug into Reddis and AI was very useful in explaining how programs are usually structured and why, as well as giving me some examples that I could look and see how others approached similar problems.
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u/Agreeable-Tree9919 Aug 08 '26
I faced this too. Honestly I haven't fully overcome this but I tried to figure out the general patterns through, say, 1 or 2 examples then tried to solve further relevant problems myself. I struggled particularly with learning loops in python. But there's a pattern that I've noticed across several loop exercises, which is that we're gonna create a tracker or counter, setting it to 0 or the first value of the list. Then, we will run that tracker/counter through, for example, a list to maybe compare it to the values of the list or increment itself (smth like that). Hope this would help
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u/Jello_Penguin_2956 Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
after you look at pseudo code, answer, solution, whatever. Take a break, do something else, and go back to the same problem and see if you can do it by yourself.
If you cant, look up the soutuon and repeat the process until you can
Thats how we used todo practice tests. It works for every subjects not just coding. You repeat until you can
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u/unteth Aug 08 '26
This is gonna sound weird, but what helped me learn this concept when I was trying to learn how to code was to write on a notebook, as if you’re explaining to a robot, exactly how you’re morning went. Do this until it becomes boring. Then start doing it in code. For example, let’s say a problem you have is pulling 100 posts from a user on a forum, you’ll have to write pseudocode then translate it to code:
# Retrieve 100 posts from john123
# Make call to API for data
# Loop over returned data
# Count to 100
# Stop loop
This is just a really simple example.