Don't make your problems too tangible. Abstract them. Sure you need to check which events (given by start & end dates) are happening at a given time. Don't jump in just yet. Think about it. You're searching for intervals given a point. Google that. Read about it. You'll learn something useful instead of just doing an inefficient naive solution. Now that you know it, show off. Find some programming competition and own that!

@hitko how old is the kid we are talking about?

@molaram Lol that's the kind of stuff we've been learning at smth like 12, I guess interval trees came at 15, but the way of abstracting problems is something you can totally learn at primary school level.

My algorithm prof at uni had this great way of explaining qs to 7 yo kids using bottles of water and a seesaw made of a pen and a ruler, and 9/10 times those kids would immediately suggest "you just repeat the first step for each set of bottles until you only have one on each side" - essentially suggesting the concept of recursion without even thinking about it.

My advise is give the kid the solution to their problem and ask then to solve them.

I started as the teenager and my first program is to do my homework for me.

@molaram

What do you mean by "out of the nutsack" since I am not familiar with the expression?

@molaram

Sorry my mistake.I mean ask them about their problem,give them a solution and tell them to implement the solution for their problem.

For a kid who have problem waking up , you could give them the solution of pulling the curtain up the specific time. Then you could ask them to implement the solution. How would you implement pulling the curtain up at the specific time.