Whenever I get a new task or a new program to improve, the very first thing I do is to think about the task. I read the existing program to understand what the creator did or I simply read the task 2 times.
I’m going to split this article in two parts, one part about a new program and the second about a given program task.
After reading and understanding the task I try to come up with a first concrete idea about what my program should do and how It could look like. To go on with personally I like to reflect about the task a second time since my second thoughts often improve or change my first idea in a good way!

If on the other hand I have to improve a given program I come up with an idea how I could solve the task too but then I highly recommend to start searching for the place you can/should implement your idea. There is nothing worse than being lost in the code of someone else! IDEs often have good ways to search for call hierarchy and other things. Use them!

I’ll hope I could show you how I start to solve a programming task! Next article is about “What’s important” and it should be out June 14th
Cheers d3orn