Ok so this post hits right at home with me.
The reason is because I wrote this off of pure inspiration. I realized there is one skill that every developer should have. In reality this skill is useful for life. I'm not gonna keep you waiting and let's get straight into it.
The one skill is...
If you can develop this one skill you can go far. Essentially life is about solving problems, and if you can sell your solution you can create a business. And that's what employers want to know about you, can you solve their problem.
I realized this because I spent the past 5 days struggling to figure out this one particular problem at work. So bear with me if my excitement seems to leap out the page. It's hard to control when you feel like you just conquered a mountain!
I like to consider myself a storyteller, or would like to be one (another problem to solve). Before we begin I will give a little background on the recent dilemma that seemed to suck every piece of brain power to figure out.
The story begins one Wednesday afternoon as a client called in about her Wordpress blog. She asked why her blog posts were linking to a 404 page. You know the dreaded 404 page that says "Oops page not found."
At first glance I thought to myself "oh this is a simple fix".
As I began to walk her through, she showed me something that seemed abnormal. I had no worries though. As I took a quick glance I thought to myself "oh I know what is causing this problem". Again I thought "simple fix".
I couldn't have been more wrong.
Here is the setup. The permalink that is created for each blog post was creating a random generated permalink and for some odd reason I was not able to edit or make any changes to it.
Why you ask?
Well, for some reason the permalink settings on the Wordpress dashboard was not giving me access as well as not providing an edit button.
Ok, so at this point I tried my first attempts to solve this problem and it was time for some detective work.
I knew that there had to be some way to edit the permalink structure on the backend, apart from the admin panel. I didn't have any prior experience with it but I knew there was a way.
My first question was what was causing this issue?
I tried the standard protocol when a Wordpress site encounters a problem which is usually plugins. But that wasn't the case.
I had never encountered a problem to this extent so I did what all developers and designers do...
ASK GOOGLE
I don't care who you are, senior developer, javascript expert, a newbie, or my mothers 76 year old friend, everyone needs help and google is your best friend in these moments.
Unfortunately, google wasn't on my side this time.
Every blog article and every video seemed to be pointing me in the wrong direction and giving me the wrong answer.
Things I already knew and tried. I even tried to change the code in .htaccess file and nothing.
Have you ever heard the statement, there are no dumb questions?
In my research I was asking every question I could think of. As a problem solver one thing you need to be is persistent.
It took me 5 days to find a solution.
On the 5th day I found one video that helped point me in the right direction, restore the file back to normal and the problem was solved.
Now that you heard my triumphant story I realized there are some things that helped me get here and I think understanding some of these concepts will take you a long way.
One thing to know if you want to become a developer is knowing what you're getting into.
I won't lie to you.
It's hard and there are times you can get really frustrated. But if you take your time and step away for a little bit you can come back with a fresh pair of eyes.
So the one skill I believe that is highly valuable as a problem solver is the ability to persist.
If you leave with anything from this post is that "there is always a solution".
The thing is figuring out how to get to it.
So I know when some people come across a problem they usually cave in or reach out to someone for help.
I'm not saying there is anything wrong in that, but have you really sat down and tried everything to figure out a solution.
The goal to becoming a good problem solver is how you persist through the problem. I wish I could put it another way but its really that simple.
If you're willing to be persistent and determined to sit until you get to a solution, you will win. You have to make up in your mind that no matter what, you are drawing the line in the sand until you find a solution no matter how long it takes.
It's as simple as that.
The only way you begin to build a skill is through repetition. So any time you come across a problem, take the time to find a solution. Over time you will build your problem solving skills because you built up that muscle.
So the question to ask now is how will you address your own problems.
The beauty with learning how to code and becoming a web developer is that it is inevitable you will run into a problem. So put on your debugging hat and face your problems in life head on.
PS if you want to see how I solved a recent problem I was facing with creating content for landing pages, check out this web copy template I made
