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Ask HN: What are ways programmers "reframe" problems to make them easier?

by canxerian on 3/31/25, 11:08 AM with 3 comments

I write shaders and I often use HSL colour space rather than RGB. This solves a few problems: keeps contrast ratios consistent (by keeping luminance, L constant). Adjusts hue, H, whilst keeping the colour palette in harmony.

It also means I need only modify 1 value rather than 3.

What are other ways in which programmers reframe problems to make them conceptual easier and the implementation more straightforward?

by dtagames on 3/31/25, 1:07 PM
Not to be dismissive, but we could describe all of programming this way. Since computers just run machine code and deal only with simple math and swapping memory and storage values, all of our code is just "reframing" the problem in different ways. We pick the language or abstraction that's easiest to work with for what we're trying to accomplish, like you did with picking the "HSL" language over RGB. In reality, both will be converted to binary values in storage and voltage levels in your monitor.