@sam_ayo__|Fri Dec 19 202522 views
I've always been a very inquisitive person, and I sometimes get challenged for asking too many questions-lol-but asking "why" is fundamental to who I am, and I find it hard to turn off the part of my brain asking "why".
This curiosity has led me to think about and explore many ideas. Often, I discover that someone else is already tackling the problem and doing a great job. However, what I’ve noticed is that when I ask “why”, it usually reveals a fundamental gap in my own knowledge that I need to fill (That knowledge is likely already out there, meaning I need to explore further to find it), or highlights opportunities for optimizations that remove the need to ask “why” in the first place (Discover the solution myself)
This is one of the reasons I believe thinking from the ground up is a powerful optimization technique. Many of the most effecient algorithms in computer science work this way — dynamic programming, greedy algorithms, sliding windows, divide and conquer etc.
While researching this idea, I learned that this is also how Elon Musk actually approaches problem-solving, and he's been vocal about it too, which I found really inspiring.