Got stuck on a simple loop for 2 hours and finally figured it out by writing it on paper

I was trying to build a for loop in Python that counted backwards and kept messing up the range() parameters until I drew each step on graph paper and saw my mistake... has anyone else found that physically writing code out helps when you're totally stuck?

3 comments

3 Comments

aaronf4025d agoMost Upvoted

Wrote out a Fibonacci sequence by hand last night after my recursive function kept overflowing, and yeah, seeing the actual steps laid out made it click way faster than staring at a screen. The physical act of writing forces your brain to slow down and actually process each line.

parkerl3324d ago

Man, same here! I did the exact same thing with a linked list reversal a few months back, just drew it out on graph paper step by step. Actually tracing the pointers moving around made me finally understand recursion in a way no tutorial could.

clark.faith24d ago

Did @aaronf40 actually expect recursive Fibonacci to work without blowing the stack?