How to trick myself into wanting to do implementation problems?

Revision en1, by nicksms, 2023-03-27 16:22:31

This is gonna sound like a really dumb question, but how should I go about trying to trick myself into wanting to do implementation problems?

I've noticed that for pretty much everything else, how much I want to do something is directly tied to how much enjoyment I get from it after the fact -- solving problems in general, for instance, is something I look forward to since I feel good after doing it. And I do feel quite good after finishing implementation problems, but for some reason I cannot stop dreading them.

One thing I've found (this could be a cause or a symptom) is that debugging implementation problems genuinely takes the soul out of my body, whereas if my math is incorrect and I have to go back and fix it I don't feel bad at all.

Still I feel like I have the potential to enjoy them, as I feel more satisfied with getting them than with almost any other type of problem. Sometimes I even feel like I actually want to do them, but every time that happens I just think back on the few that I've done that have gone horribly wrong. How should I go about getting myself to enjoy them? Should I just try medium ones until I can tell myself that debugging really isn't as bad as I think it is? Should I practice on ICPC problems (even though for ICPC, I'm not usually the one coding)? Should I be looking at failing test cases or trying to debug without them (remember that I'm not exactly trying to get better at implementation so much as I am trying to enjoy it more)?

Please advise. I'll be working on Kattis: keys when I have free time today to try to get my foot in the door, since I remember seeing that the implementation for that was fairly frustrating.

Any practice problems (especially with a math flavor to them) would be appreciated.

Tags implementations, practice, help me

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en1 English nicksms 2023-03-27 16:22:31 1882 Initial revision (published)