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AFAIK there aren't many...the only time I ever encountered anything that was like this was in the higher maths.

Even various systems/enterprise Architecture classes don't quite view the world this way. Sure you start with a high level problem, but very quickly you find yourself building up a solution rather than functionally decomposing the problem down to easily solvable atoms.

For example:

Problem: "Design an enterprise system for a company that meets these high level abstract goals"

Solution: Fill out the TOGAF framework.




Several areas high level engineering, logistics, and business deal with breaking problems down into their parts. Unfortunately the people that run big projects often have not studied them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research#Second_Worl...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_analysis#Overview

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_tree#General

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decomposition_%28computer_scien...


Yeah, I agree with these for the most part.

But I'm wondering if we're just doing this all wrong. If this kinda of mental technique shouldn't be taught very early in many disciplines...maybe even as early as elementary school.

It's not to say we should abandon the bottom up approach in use today, it's very useful for understanding many subjects. But there's very little done from a top-down style approach I'm thinking of...and it gives us a deficit in people who are unprepared for learning programming or similar disciplines later on.




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