Solving technical problems in 2025
I thought about something earlier this morning while planning for the day. And it was all about how we have been solving technical problems. I remember years ago when I spent lots of time researching on Google how to solve a particular problem. It was awesome and tough at the same time. At times, I could spend days trying to fix one certain issue. It could be a WordPress bug or even a coding bug (PHP and jQuery at the time). It was bittersweet. YouTube came in very handy. It was one of my go-to problem-solving platforms even till now.
StackOverflow and Quora were a great help. I solved several bugs on StackOverflow because I was certain someone somewhere had experienced the same issue I had. And don't forget W3Schools—those moments when you forget how to style a div. LOL! I always tend to forget how to add media queries.
Oh! Do you also remember Reddit? I didn't use Reddit as much as YouTube and StackOverflow. One of the funniest things I still remember is how we used to copy and paste error codes into Google, add "StackOverflow" at the end, and boom! We’d find the exact problem, proving that we were not alone. The excitement was always through the roof. Lol.
But did you also experience how frustrating it can be when the problem you’re trying to solve isn’t found on StackOverflow? Or worse, when someone had already posted the same issue but got no answers? Oh my, that was the worst feeling ever.
Now, AI has been extremely helpful. As much as I do not like the idea of some developers relying on AI to write all their code, I love the fact that it saves time. If it used to take me six hours to fix a bug, AI can help me resolve it in less than 30 minutes. That’s productive. My backlog has drastically reduced, and I can now focus on building rather than spending endless hours debugging.
Technology keeps evolving, and the way we solve problems continues to improve. But one thing remains—there’s always a solution out there; we just have to know where to look.
At the end of the day, problem-solving is what makes us better developers. Whether it's through Google searches, AI, or communities like StackOverflow, the key is to keep learning and adapting. The tools may change, but the mindset of continuous improvement stays the same. The more we solve, the more we grow.