Think Like a Programmer An Introduction to Creative Problem Solving

Instead of learning by trial and error, you can learn problem solving in a systematic way. That’s what this book is all about. You can learn techniques to organize your thoughts, procedures to discover solutions, and strategies to apply to certain classes of problems. By studying these approaches, you can unlock your creativity. Make no mistake: Programming, and especially problem solving, is a creative activity. Creativity is mysterious, and no one can say exactly how the creative mind functions. Yet, if we can learn music composition, take advice on creative writing, or be shown how to paint, then we can learn to creatively solve programming problems, too.
This book isn’t going to tell you precisely what to do it’s going to help you develop your latent problem-solving abilities so that you will know what you should do. This book is about helping you become the programmer you are meant to be.