Stop Searching for Code and Start Solving the Right Problems

I got a call last week from a new client. It’s a story I’ve heard a dozen times. They had a WooCommerce site, and their previous developer built them a “custom” product filtering system. On the surface, it looked okay. But in reality, pages were timing out, the filtering was buggy, and worst of all, the code was a complete black box. The client was frustrated, losing sales, and had no idea how to fix it. Total mess.

This kind of situation is a direct result of a developer who focuses only on finding quick answers, without engaging in any creative problem solving. They treat development like a checklist of problems, scouring the web for “How do I do X with Y?” for every single step.

The Danger of Copy-Paste Development

When I first cracked open the codebase, I made an assumption. “Probably a monster of a WP_Query,” I thought. “A dozen meta queries slowing everything to a crawl.” My initial plan was to just refactor the query, maybe cache the results in a transient, and be done with it. A quick fix for a common problem.

But that was just my own bias for a quick solution kicking in. The real problem wasn’t a single bad query; it was the entire architecture. The previous dev had slapped together snippets from half a dozen tutorials without any unifying design. Each snippet “solved” a micro-problem in isolation, but together they created a brittle and inefficient system. Trust me on this, fixing the query would have just been a bandage on a much deeper wound.

The developer wasn’t thinking like an architect; they were thinking like an integrator, just duct-taping solutions together. This is a trap many developers fall into, a topic explored in a great post I read over at carlalexander.ca about creativity in programming. The relentless hunt for answers means you stop designing and just start assembling.

Thinking Like an Architect, Not a Mechanic

The right solution wasn’t to optimize the meta queries. It was to get rid of them entirely for this feature. The data—the product filters—should never have been stored in post meta to begin with. It was the wrong tool for the job. The correct approach was to use a custom taxonomy.

Instead of patching the old system, we threw it out and built a new one based on a solid foundation. Here’s the kicker: the code was simpler, cleaner, and infinitely faster. By asking a better question—”What’s the right way to structure this data?” instead of “How do I make this slow query faster?”—we found a more elegant and robust solution.

// The Wrong Way: A messy, slow meta query
$args = array(
    'post_type'      => 'product',
    'posts_per_page' => -1,
    'meta_query'     => array(
        'relation' => 'AND',
        array(
            'key'     => '_custom_filter_color',
            'value'   => 'blue',
            'compare' => '=',
        ),
        array(
            'key'     => '_custom_filter_size',
            'value'   => 'large',
            'compare' => '=',
        ),
    ),
);

// The Right Way: A clean, fast taxonomy query
$args = array(
    'post_type'      => 'product',
    'posts_per_page' => -1,
    'tax_query'      => array(
        'relation' => 'AND',
        array(
            'taxonomy' => 'product_color',
            'field'    => 'slug',
            'terms'    => 'blue',
        ),
        array(
            'taxonomy' => 'product_size',
            'field'    => 'slug',
            'terms'    => 'large',
        ),
    ),
);

So, What’s the Real Takeaway Here?

Being a senior developer isn’t about having all the answers memorized. It’s about knowing how to ask the right questions. It’s the ability to see the bigger picture and engage in creative problem solving rather than just hunting for the next code snippet. You have to be willing to sketch, to experiment, and sometimes, to throw away your first idea to build something that lasts.

Look, this stuff gets complicated fast. If you’re tired of debugging someone else’s mess and just want your site to work, drop my team a line. We’ve probably seen it before.