Mental Warmup

… or mental pain generator, I don't know who are you, dear reader.

You've come here to learn programming, and programming is all about doing mental processes. Thinking, in common tongue. Are you comfortable with thinking? I don't want to sound rude, it's just another checkbox in a "wannabe developer" checklist:

• have a desire to learn something new
• can dedicate some hours a week to learning, without distractions
• find a free teaching/learning resource
• find a friendly community, where you can ask questions and get feedback
• like thinking on tough problems
• …

So should I mark that checkbox?

If checkbox marked…

I'll talk about motivation, but a bit later. It will be culmination, a plot of what I'm going to ask you next. Okay, so let's start with a simple equation:

Doing programming == solving puzzles.

This is a basic equation of programming. Learning programming is essentially learning to solve puzzles. How do you feel, do you like to solve puzzles? In any case, I don't want to hear your answer, I want you to answer yourself that honestly.

I'll help you a bit. I'll present a little example, you should try to solve it though.

A little puzzle

This puzzle is about squares.