Good thing he didn't make a sudoku app or he wouldn't have learned the same lesson... good luck taking an iterative approach to that.
Seriously though, sometimes it's good to approach a problem using that advice from the chess teacher in Searching for Bobby Fisher: "Don't move until you see it"
Oh, iterative approaches often are used when stuck in sudoku. deduce everything you can, but once you can't, guess where there are the least options remaining. erase if you can't get there from here.
Sure, you can guess at Sudoku if you want (though it's often considered poor form to design a puzzle that requires a guess), but the (intended) point was that you don't jump right in and start iterating from the beginning.
Seriously though, sometimes it's good to approach a problem using that advice from the chess teacher in Searching for Bobby Fisher: "Don't move until you see it"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V36gt6_uJy4&t=7m34s