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Grokking Techtalk #45: First Principles Thinking
- 1. Warm-up Game Play gameand infer the rule of the game. What programming concept is this game referring to? http://tinyurl.com/hd-game
- 2. First Principles Thinking Unleash yourengineering creativity
- 3. Hung Doan Software Engineer@ Coda.io Lead CS Instructor @ Steam For Vietnam
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- 8. Practicing with moreproblem set wasn’t effective…
- 9. Time to changestrategy ● It was summer of Grade 11 ● Back to the basic: 1 month ○ Fundamental algorithms ○ Data structures ○ Graph theories
- 10. Time to changestrategy ● It was summer of Grade 11 ● Back to the basic: 1 month ○ Fundamental algorithms ○ Data structures ○ Graph theories ● Redo previous problem sets: 1 month ○ Break down the problem ○ Identify which tool is suitable and when ○ Solidify my coding skills
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- 13. First Principles Thinking 1.What is First Principles Thinking? 2. How to apply it in Software Development? 3. What risks should I watch out for?
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- 15. Break problems down totheir fundamental truths Tìm về gốc rễ của vấn đề
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- 18. How do wesolve problem?
- 19. How do wesolve problem?
- 20. How do wesolve problem?
- 21. Solution for ageneric quadratic equation How do we solve problem?
- 22. Problem Solving At school,we learn to memorize formulas and question templates ● Math ● Physics ● Chemistry ● English ● Literature ● … and Software Engineering
- 23. Problem Solving At school,we learn to memorize formulas and question templates ● Math ● Physics ● Chemistry ● English ● Literature ● … and Software Engineering
- 24. Problem Solving At school,we learn to memorize formulas and question templates ● Math ● Physics ● Chemistry ● English ● Literature ● … and Software Engineering Analogical Reasoning, Pattern Matching
- 25. Analogical Reasoning ● Fastto create a solution ● Easy to replicate
- 26. But not all problemsin life are solved…
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- 28. Chef vs Cook Creatinga new dish VS. Following the recipes
- 29. But how tobe a chef?
- 30. Knows the fundamentals ● Ingredients ●Nutrition ● Taste ● Combinations ● Experiments => Come up with new dishes.
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- 34. SpaceX ● Cheaper spacecrafts ●Recoverable, reusable spacecrafts
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- 37. SpaceX = Aluminum Alloy Titanium Copper CarbonFiber Materials
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- 39. How to developFirst Principles Thinking habits?
- 40. Techniques to arrive at first principles thinking Interestedin understanding the problem Five whys (5 câu hỏi tại sao) Cartesian method of doubts (phương pháp nghi vấn Descartes) Socratic questioning (phương pháp truy vấn biện chứng) Why? Is that correct? Are you sure? Why? Why? Why? Why? What __? How __? Why __?
- 41. 5 whys Move pastsymptoms by asking “why” until reaching true root cause of the issue
- 42. “If I hadan hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions” Albert Einstein
- 44. I don’t know howto code I can write code but uncertain if it works What am I not clear about? I understand X clearly
- 45. Thinking out ofthe box?
- 46. ? ? ? ? Thinking out ofthe box?
- 47. Thinking in abigger box!
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- 49. Warm-up Game What arethe rules of the game? What programming concept does this game refer to?
- 50. Warm-up Game It’s variablescope! ● Local scope (house) ● Global scope (community park)
- 51. “Know” the fundamentals ● Functions,Variables, Classes ● Memory ● Thread ● Data structures (array, map, …) ● Coding skills
- 52. Effective debugging ● Mismatchbetween human understanding <> computer ● Treat it as an opportunity to learn about the codebase & system
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- 55. Example: Timezone bug Offset= X Offset = X”
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- 57. Collect new building blocks ●API Design ● Distributed System ● Micro Services ● Product Thinking ● Business Domain Knowledge ● Communication Skills ● etc.
- 58. System Design By understandingthe building blocks of a system, you can challenge existing systems and come up with fundamentally different solutions
- 59. Case study: Sorbet-rails Generating staticsignatures for dynamic Ruby methods (methods generated at runtime)
- 60. Case study: Sorbet-rails Generating staticsignatures for dynamic Ruby methods (methods generated at runtime) The popular way of solving this problem, adopt by other libraries like Shopify’s tapioca, and Ruby’s own RBS system
- 61. Case study: Sorbet-rails Leveraged myknowledge of: ● Sorbet ● Rails ● Codegen (learned @ FB) To come up with a different solution for type-checking dynamic methods What are dynamic methods? How are they created? When are they created? When do they change? What should their signature be?
- 62. Case study: Sorbet-rails What aredynamic methods? How are they created? When are they created? When do they change? What should their signature be? Generate signature once Use for every type-checks Leveraged my knowledge of: ● Sorbet ● Rails ● Codegen (learned @ FB) To come up with a different solution for type-checking dynamic methods
- 63. Case study: React Rethinking front-end development ●Build reusable Components ● Rerender when data change
- 64. Case study: React Rethinking front-end developmentin principles: ● Increase cohesion, reduce coupling ● Composition over inheritance ● Simplify state change handling by re-rendering instead of mutating Pete Hunt: React: Rethinking best practices
- 65. Engineering Career Growth ● EntryEngineer ● Junior Engineer ● Senior Engineer ● Staff+ Engineer Increasingly bigger problem scope!
- 66. Engineering Career Growth ● EntryEngineer ● Junior Engineer ● Senior Engineer ● Staff+ Engineer Increasingly bigger problem scope! PSHE: Increasingly ambiguous problems Problem (Given blank space, find problems worth solving) Solution (Given Problem, solve it) How (Given Solution, how to implement) Execute (Given plan, write code)
- 67. Finding “Problems” ● Understandthe system ● Observe, notice problems ● Decide the problem to solve ● Propose new solutions for the problem => Staff+ level
- 68. Do I needto know how transistors work to code?
- 69. Risks ● Spend toomuch time learning vs. making impact ● Make the wrong propositions & conclusions ● Focus on unimportant problems
- 70. Dig N+1 Layer Deeper ●Stay Curious. ● Learn about the layer underneath. ● Timebox exploration. ● Use analogical reasoning for familiar problems.
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- 72. Validate ideas with data ●Always question your assumptions ● Use data to prove or disprove them
- 73. Find one impactfulproblem is more important than solving many unimportant problems.
- 74. Summary Break down problemsto fundamental parts to build solution. Build solid fundamental skills. Stay curious. Be observant. Ask many questions, like “What do I not know?” “What am I not sure about?”
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- 76. “I only teachstress and the end of stress”
- 77. Cartesian method ofdoubts ● https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_doubt ● Doubting every assumptions, we realize we can go deeper
- 78. Socratic Questioning ● Knowwhat you don't know ● https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_questioning
- 79. the level ofthinking that occurs is influenced by the level of questions asked
- 80. iPhone ● Multi-touch screen ●Sensors ● Mobile Web Browser
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- 86. iPhone 1 ->N Source: bankmycell.com
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- 89. Case study: React ● Developreusable components ● Declarative UI rendering code ● Maintain a virtual Document Object Model (DOM)
- 90. Case study: React ● Maintaina virtual Document Object Model (DOM) ● Declarative rendering code “What if developer focuses on rendering components based on state as opposed to modifying DOM?”
- 91. Analogical Reasoning ● Fast toarrive at solution ● Easy to replicate
- 92. Analogical Reasoning ● Fastto create a solution ● Easy to replicate
- 93. Going from 0=> 1? ● It's much harder ● But not all problems in the world are already solved ● New problems
- 94. First principles thinking ●For breakthrough innovation ● Breaking a problem space down to its building blocks ● Then building up a different solution
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- 96. Case study: Sorbet-rails Leveraged myknowledge of: ● Sorbet ● Rails ● Codegen (learned @ FB) To come up with a different solution for type-checking dynamic methods The popular way of solving this problem, adopt by other libraries like Shopify’s tapioca, and Ruby’s own RBS system
- 97. Dig N+1 Layer Deeper ●Stay Curious ● Learn about the layer underneath