Solve 1.5 Problems a Week

78 Solutions is a mindset for deliberate practice in software — choosing the right challenges, solving them well, and building momentum without burning out.

About 78 Solutions

Choose the Right Problems

Some problems aren’t worth solving. This method helps you spot the ones that matter — the ones with long-term payoff and deep learning.

Solve Them Well

Write, test, improve. Then do it again. You’ll build skill through repetition and code reuse, turning your codebase — and your career — into a perpetual training ground.

Stand on Your Own Shoulders

Every solution is a seed. Let your past solutions guide (or help solve) your future problems, and let your systems evolve with you over time.

How It Works

Each week, you choose 1.5 problems to solve. Perhaps you will choose one problem worth solving and one small improvement to your toolkit. Or perhaps you will solve three problems over two weeks. The goal isn’t just to ship — it’s to learn while you build, and to build things worth keeping.

1. Frame the Right Question

Define a problem clearly and tie it to a bigger purpose. Even small problems can unlock big growth if chosen wisely.

2. Solve It Deliberately

Work with focus, using habits that sharpen your thinking — like writing tests, reflecting on what’s hard, or reusing past solutions.

3. Log, Reuse, Repeat

Document your progress. Save what works. Each solution becomes a tool in your belt — for next week, next project, or your future self.

Latest Resources

Recent articles and submissions from contributors — or technically, just one (for now). Want to publish something on 78solutions.com? Visit the contributors page to learn how.

Recent Articles

Still solving problems (the 78 solutions way)

Siteimp needed technical support inside a Windows application, monitoring notifications for user-owned Slack and Discord channels, and a way to treat early support requests as first-class product feedback. Instead of building everything from scratch, Greg reused the ideas behind Formimp, rewrote the necessary parts in Rust, and turned an old static-site contact form solution into a desktop support workflow. It is a practical example of the 78 solutions philosophy: solve small problems well, make them reusable, and future problems become easier to solve.

Blog – May 2026

On software reuse: FitnessTracker and SharePhotos

Reusable software is one of my personal principles because it delivers better software experiences to customers and provides better business value for me. The FitnessTracker project created the opportunity to lift Rust modules out of FitnessTracker, drop them into a new project, write custom React for the front end and add some new modules to create a totally new product. This article tells that story.

Blog – August 2025

Recent Links

Nanoclaw, open source software and search optimization

With three fresh new hubs full of content on content engineering, monitoring and reliability and website structure and integrity, Siteimp is getting closer to their dreams of making the web significantly faster and more accessible.

LiteLLM Attack Transcript

While generative AI has both good and bad traits, its potential as a security tool is perhaps its best trait. In this case, Claude Code not only helps an ML engineer uncover a vulnerability but also helps him alert the right people. This article is an interesting counterpoint to the constant news about open source projects getting inundated with low quality AI contributions.

Nanoclaw, open source software and search optimization

Sometimes when an open source project goes viral, domain squatters will jump in and buy up domains around that project. It is potentially lucrative and especially in the age of generative AI, it takes virtually no time or effort. An AI assistant called Nanoclaw is caught up in this right now. And while domain squatting is not usually that interesting, in this case the sheer amount of power AI assistants can get makes this a potentially interesting attack surface.