Trouble with Code Challenges (iOS)

Hi there, Stephen Whitcombe ! First, you're not alone. Lots of people have problems with programming challenges. Just take a look at these boards I once got stuck on one for 3 hours because I used the wrong quotation mark, and I'm not kidding. You've probably heard this before: "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time." That is no truer anywhere than it is in this particular discipline.

I have a theory about those of us that take on this particular challenge (and I mean programming). I feel like we tend to be very detail-oriented and in some cases so much that we get mentally "zoomed in" on the problem. We are looking at it and looking at it and can't see it. Ever put down a coffee cup, pen, or book and come back two minutes later and you can't find it? You could've sworn you put it right there. And then someone right beside you points to it, and it turns out you've been looking at it all along? That's a real psychological phenomenon known as a "mental schotoma" or blind spot. Once you say to yourself that you can't see it, your mind goes ahead and makes that real. Sometimes, the absolute best thing in the world you can do is stand up and walk off. Try and mentally "zoom out" for a bit if you can.

I feel like you might also be missing a step here. Before you try and put your thoughts into Swift code, try and put them into ordinary English (or whatever native language you might have). Now, I would bet you good money that you could teach a 3rd grader what an odd number is. And how would you define an odd number? You could say all numbers that are not divisible by 2, but that's not really accurate, is it? Because all numbers are divisible by two. Three divided by 2 is equal to 1.5. What you mean to say is that numbers that are not evenly divisible by 2 are odd. Then you have the challenge of what does evenly divisible by mean? Well, we say something is evenly divisible by another number when we can divide by that number and there is no remainder. This is what the modulus/remainder operator does. It returns the remainder of the division by that number. For instance 23 % 10 would return 3. Twenty-three is divisible by 10 twice, with remainder of three. Now, in the case of even/odd, we don't really care what the remainder is (as it can only be 0 or 1), we just care if there is a remainder. So any number that is evenly divisible by another will have a remainder of 0. Swift is a bit of an oddball here in that it actually uses the ! mark for other things, but in most languages, and even in this case you can actually read that as "NOT". So if (n % 2 != 0). And this is how you would read that in English: "If a number is divided by two and the remainder is NOT 0. Which means that number is odd

So you are about to start on your first project, I take it. Remember, take it one step at a time. Break it down as small as you can possibly get it. Programmers even include things in the first parts of their code called "sanity checks" just to make sure basic things are working properly. I will leave you with this great quote to chew on:

"Every great developer you know got there by solving problems they were unqualified to solve until they actually did it." ~ Patrick McKenzie

Hope this helps!