What do you do if you are untrained in thinking logically and you currently are naturally bad at thinking logically?

Lacking this skill brings many problems: bad at understanding logical models, data structures, databases, collections of data, solving bugs, etc. Pretty much all the real work in Software Development. I heard the solution is mathematics, e.g. approximation theory, graph theory, set theory, etc, that would help you get a better vision and grasp on these things.

Has anyone been in this situation? Everyone around you knows by nature how to 'see' solutions to problems in their head, but you on the other hand, don't.

i just tried to teach a fellow dev some logic and as always he's resistant to it because he would rather not take blame than become more intelligent. he literally came to me saying he wanted me to view him as intelligent... but seems he doesn't want to put in the work I guess

I think it's more important to him to seem blameless

I think with people I ran into in the past it's always something like this. they just simple don't want to learn. they could but they just don't want to. I've never seen someone not learn if they actually genuinely wanted to. just find everything you don't know and study it, play with it. eventually it will become second-nature to you

I also find it wild when people judge me for not knowing something automatically. you have to actually teach me it. point to it existing. answer my questions about it. just telling me there's something fundamentally wrong with me as a human because I don't already know it is so toxic. surprisingly it happens in this field

I guess I would ask friends and people I trust for help?
Would probably ask them to help explain it to me and try to have them help me understand.

@jestdotty Thank you for your advice. Yes, I equally get stupid comments from toxic devs as well, but thankfully it's not many devs.

If you are naturally bad at it, I'm afraid there's not much to do. You cannot just rewire your brain to be able to interpret stuff differently.

You can compensate for it through study and maths, but it's not ever going to reach what someone with natural talent *and* effort can do.

And bear with me, this is not a stem vs nonstem thing.

I'm a physicist, and I could not, for the life of me, solve many integrals a mathematician could do with their eyes closed, because I'm just not made for thinking their way.

@CoreFusionX I think it is possible to rewire your brain.

@CaptainRant Im with CoreFusion on this. I've seen people struggle in uni with this, and I've spent time with them for 6 years and I don't think they ever improved. So Im really unsure that you can learn it. If yes then it probably takes a lot of effort and time. You can likely build some intuition with enough exposure, but the question then becomes how to get that exposure in such quality and quantity, because It's clearly not enough to just read books or listen to lectures. This imo requires active learning more than other subjects because It's impossible to describe something so abstract by a teacher but you can learn frameworks to use when you solve problems yourself. Learning the framework however is not the goal, the goal is to use it often with many problems and successfully solve them to build experience and Intuition

@Hazarth Well, I am aware there are people who don't improve (mainly because of factors not necessarily related to them).

Ah yes, a lot of effort and time. I added it up. I spent a total of 11 years in two colleges educating myself to become a sharp Software Developer and Computer Scientist. The last six years in college were the real transformation. At that time I was even promoted to Valedictorian, but I had a drive that no one else had and I am a great teacher as well, uplifting my entire class of 100+ students to passing the exams while they themselves were really bad at Computer Science.

And of course, you need a strong theoretical framework combined with active learning in the case of science-like activities. I still have a long road to go, but I find it highly annoying that the industry demands high skills from me already when 70% of the time I've never even worked with the technology. Like putting DevOps guy to do SoftwDev.

@CaptainRant Im just trying to explain my thought process on this. Corrct me if I misubderstood but the way I read your message is that you yourself lack logical thinking, even after all the years of experience. Or are you talking about other students?

@Hazarth I'm lacking optimal skill in it. I already have a strong foundation but I need to become stronger at it because the industry problems get increasingly complex. An example project I had to deal with was where one of the core formulas used for the system was formally expressed mathematically in code as well as referring to a mathematically formally-expressed document. This document is as academic as they come and it talks about proofs and shows complex algorithms. Why was this drafted? So they could justify the complexity to Business (budgeting). Now, I don't have a tremendous amount of experience with mathematics and data structures. If I look at a mathematical proof and the complex algorithm in code, my brain tries to understand it step by step, but it's hard. Someone else looks at the code and goes "Ah yeah makes sense" but they are of a mathematical background. A second instance is modeling a backend. Somehow some people magically know what fits, but I don't.

@CaptainRant I think you have the personality of being a perfectionist so you're stressing yourself a lot more about this than the average person would (and are probably susceptible to this sort of "persuasion" from people)

I also disagree with earlier posters who said you can't train yourself into skills. you can. and math skills in particular are a very good thing to train yourself in because math is universal in the universe so it would be an extremely useful skill no matter what you end up doing in life afterwards

younger people have an easier time with math because their brains learn faster, so in certain cultures they try to capitalize on neuroplasticity of childhood to teach them math skills quickly (and then it also makes organizing later concepts easier). in the western world that is not something they do though. so it's not that you're being left behind, but you have very high ideals, which is fine but I want to make you aware of it

@jestdotty Yes, I have too strong self-criticism. For me, I have to reach the perfection of NASA or ISO to consider myself good.

I know. I have a whole history story about my college years that made me grow substantially but I'll leave that out. lol. Indeed, the skill of extrapolated insight is invaluable.

I have noticed that the older I get, the harder it becomes to learn something new. It becomes tedious, slow and annoying, though I like learning, but at my pace. Yes, they heavily teach us math here but I misse out on that. I've been made aware of it all my life and it's a battle I go through.

> What do you do if you are untrained in thinking logically and you currently are naturally bad at thinking logically?

you vote for your local right-wing party.