DEV Community

Discussion on: Coming Back to Old Problems: How I Finally Wrote a Sudoku Solving Algorithm

Collapse
 
kevinhooke profile image
Kevin Hooke

The value of algorithms and design patterns is not in the learning and memorization, but in their appropriate usage. It's easy to teach an algorithm, but it's much more difficult to teach where and when an algorithm can be most appropriately applied. A lot of this comes from experience and intuition gained from experience, and that's difficult if not impossible to pass on to students in a theoretical classroom course. Learning theory gives you tools, but hands on experience, learning from others, and learning from trial and error experimentation, over time, helps you grow the experience to identify a problem, and identify how to apply the most appropriate and effective tools and solutions (algorithms and patterns) to solve that problem.