[elgar1212]

I can't think of any book that's really helped me solve problems. The reason for this is that reading isn't a problem solving activity, it's relatively open ended. You can do exercises, but most of them don't have any sort of grading system that outputs a pass or fail. So there isn't any signal to train off of

The thing that taught me the most about solving problems was doing a bunch of autograded systems programming assignments, and reading about how other people went about doing the assignments

I developed this mindset (note this is for writing code for an autograder that no one else will read, it isn't going into a long term codebase):

- only do the bare minimum necessary to satisfy all criteria

- ignore any bloat that people suggest unless it's part of the shortest cost path

- figure out one way of doing something and just reuse it so that you can use the mental energy elsewhere

- reread the instructions so many times that you can mentally "see" all the logic before the first line gets written

- try to work in long bursts over a short term as opposed to short bursts over a long term because context switching is too expensive