The unfair way I got good at Leetcode
Вставка
- Опубліковано 18 тра 2024
- I've practiced lots of Leetcode, but early on I had no idea I was not practicing effectively to pass interviews. Today after more than a dozen of passed technical interviews & offers, I share with you the somewhat controversial way I practice & prepare so that I end up acing technical interviews even though I am not naturally good at Leetcode.
If you don't have a list of good / common Leetcode questions handy, here's a good resource that contains such questions each topic: www.techinterviewhandbook.org...
And here's the great roadmap I mentioned in the video for knowing what order to learn the topics in: neetcode.io/roadmap
💻 For the free 12-Week Leetcode Preparation Guide notion template with more in depth tips: techtribe.beehiiv.com/subscribe
👨🏻💻 Join the free discord server: / discord
Edited by Polina: createdbypolina@gmail.com
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:37 How to Practice
1:47 Practice Interview Style
3:07 Quality & Quantity
“I wasnt bad, I was just getting started” needed that! Thank you!
Learn Solutions is the Best Advice as an Beginner
Yes, and then try to solve a few too!
This seems the right approach For beginners. 🙂
@@Blackoutfor10days yes really, there is a reason why we are preparing
We don't need to invent the wheel from scratch
Yes…we need to fill our toolbox with techniques…and when we learn a large amount of techniques, we can apply them to questions problems…the techniques are in the solutions of our practice problems
The hard thing about leetcode for me isn't the problems, its being out of practice and having to grind it all over again, in case i get laid off again. You gotta keep practicing over and over again go be competitive. Its kind of like weightlifting,if you stop you lose strength,if you stop you forget how to solve some of these or you're not fast enough.
True, though you will ramp up more quickly after the first time you went through the prep
It's almost like this shit has nothing to do with the actual job 🙄
just do 1 problem every or so day that's should be enough and shouldn't take a lot of time
@@JoeTheisid rather be asked a coding question than some random quiz question on a library or database I used intensively for like 4 months and then mostly forgot about.
@@JoeTheisjust a basis for coding basically, like a benchmark. the only issue is it’s ALL boring math and science questions
The "1 year" practice period is really illuminating. Thanks for sharing that!
I was always wondering how I can be good at it in 2-3 months, the job seeking window. Now I see. It is something that I need to persist over 1 year.
Yup, if you want to consistently reach that bar in interviews, you just got to increase the time horizon for practice
The first part really answered a question I had. I'd been sitting in front of a problem that I knew was dynamic programming, I had absolutely no idea where to start and didn't know if I should just learn the solution to that and move on. Thanks.
Great video. These are actual good tips. I can tell you really went through this process. A lot of videos tell you they did 500+ questions but how you only need the top 120. Good job reflecting on your process and sharing what worked well for you
Thank you so much!
Wow I was shocked how few subs you have when i first saw. Love you energy! No typical youtuber bs saying pls comment and like etc but i did because of how authentic. It always seems like youtubers are having hidden incentives to sell a course etc (which is fine!) but there is always like a needy vibe behind a lot of things they say and it really just feels like you are just telling people really helpful advice for the sake of helping others! thanks!
Thank you for your content. I see bunch of videos from time to time. not so many of them feel like informative and well thought. wish you best!
The best leetcode guidance I have ever seen. Thanks!
Awesome!!!
All software engineers ultimately got to this conclusion after a long period of struggle with LeetCode. You made the process more systematic
Indeed! I used to be caught up on investing hours into a question until I solve it and seeing much slower progress.
bro genuinely thank you !!
This is such a smart approach!
The advice was prob one of the best so far. After a year and a half in the industry i still cant solve a lot of them off the top of my head but its mostly the syntax and not the thought process of how I'm gonna get to the answer. My solurions are no where near elegant but i always have some idea how to start solving a problem. it just worries me whether or not id have to look up the exact syntax or how a particular class works.
This was actually helpful.When I first started,I thought I was just dumb enough and could not solve any questions. Nobody ever elaborated on the fact you stated that in the beginning, you need to learn the pattern and logic of the solution.That's why I just gave up in starting itself.But now I understood and started my journey to coding again . Thanks to you.
You got this!
Thanks a lot to give some of the best resources and advice .
WOW just WOW love it The quality of the video is so good tysm god bless you brother!!!!
Thank you so much!
There it is. Someone finally said this and I want to say that it did really work for me. It is something i decided to do on my own while back ago and it helped a lot to get better at solving leetcode problems. Thank you for this video.
Amazing, thank you!
Now This ! is Genuine Authentic Content ❤❤
i needed this, thank you!
- Focus on learning solutions to develop intuition quickly. (0:42)
- Create two lists of easy and medium tree questions to learn common solutions first. (0:53)
- Learn new patterns by studying solutions to questions you cannot solve. (1:23)
- Practice solving questions with split attention on platforms like Pramp. (2:49)
- Follow a roadmap to expose yourself to the most common questions and topics. (3:12)
- Practice on lower-level building blocks extensively, as they form the interview question foundation. (3:33)
- Solve questions not for speed but to pass interviews consistently. (4:46)
- Research and practice questions posted by others, especially for specific companies. (5:17)
- Prepare for hiring manager rounds by researching the company and their engineering challenges. (5:44)
- Allow ample time for consistent practice to improve interview skills. (6:08)
Great content and great editing skills!
Thank you so much! Polina is the creative powerhouse!
I am a beginner and i just started learning DSA. Even though i am just at Big O, this video is going to help me a lot since this is how i originally planned my study schedule, so thank you for making it more clear for me! I know i have a long way to go but am all for it ✨🎄If you have any tips or motivation, kindly send me some ✨
You got this!
Your idea is what I was following.😊
thanks Dave. it was really helpful
This video really helped thank you so much. I feel confident again 🦍
You got this!
thank you for inspiration, great content!
Thank you!
Thank you for giving me permission to look at solutions first as a beginner. I will say, it works. There are definitely concepts that stick after i see the problem a few times and it becomes more intuitive.
I also will use chatgpt and go through the code line by line and ask, what does this code mean and why is it important. Understanding the why helps me a lot.
I'm following the same strategy and it's very helpful 😄
Great to hear!
solid advice. wish i saw this 2 years ago
This is very good advice. ❤
damn this is eye opener
Wonderful insights 🎉🎉❤
Thank you so much!
Starting the leetcode grind tomorrow with advice based from this video! Might update this thread weekly cuz why not.
You got this, and looking forward for the update!
make sure you take enough and think enough tries to solve problem.
If you cant still solve it, then move on to solution.
If you just move on to solution, the thing is not every solution is same even the pattern is similar. The concept of approaching in each problem is different and thats the idea where you had to gain in hard way no matter what.
Think enough and shake your brain enough to make your brain smarter
Where to start? I'm a complete beginner
Keep making quality content :) I have subscribed to your channel today.
Thank you :)
Amazing video. Not only is the content great but the presentation also
Learning PATTERNS is what I have realized is SUPER IMPORTANT because a lot of times for someone on the front end like my self it will be a strong array or map question and learning 2 pointers and sliding window is very important there as well as sub sections like static sliding window and dynamic sliding window
What sucks about this though for a react dev Ike me is you also have to know react and a bunch of other front end related questions that have nothing to do with algorithms because some companies actually interview you for the work they do and if they don’t need high performance logic much then all that time spent on leetcode can be a negative if you didn’t also focus on the tech you program in daily
Thank you!
I've also started to crack interviews at this point and what you said is relatable. It took me also about a year to get good enough to crack DSA interviews with confidence but then there's LLD and HLD also to consider. That's more or less just dependent on learning some questions.
hi, what is LLD and HLD stands for?
@@beng2620 low level and high level design
I guess when we start working on large projects our debugging and problem solving skills make our life easier so big companies are always going to rely on DSA and LLD , HLD solutions are completely depend on observation skills , experience and weather interviewer liked it or not 😏😏.
@@abhishekshrivastav6193
Also, note that sometimes, when a team is looking for a replacement, they might have additional requirements like Web, Android etc along with DSA and the other stuff.
This is not the norm though. When companies start to hire in bulk again (hopefully next year), they'll hire in a more generic way. Nowadays, the replacement thing is most common.
@@aadityakiran_s how do you get interviews? ☠️ Due to recession not many companies are even hiring and I have done only 2 interviews so far...
Also, I am more focused towards backend dev, so can you suggest how I can land interviews on this :(
Got my first job out of college with a small company (25 employees or less) and have been there ever since (6 years this May), and I've gotta say, I absolutely dread the day I need to move on to another job with how ridiculous the space has become with often very long and drawn out interviews asking you to do leetcode questions on a whiteboard when you'll likely never use it on the job itself. Especially now that it's not JUST the FANNG companies employing these types of interviews - it's bleeding into the smaller lesser known companies as well and it's just insane to think you need to do some shit like this for a year (while currently being employed working full time) to pass some weird gatekeeper-like interview. I've been a successful software dev for just about 6 years now and can only imagine the amount of people who would be fully qualified for the job they're interviewing for just to be passed over due to a lack of leetcode grinding to the point where it's not really even about skill as a programmer and more about memorization. Memorization does not make someone a good programmer. /endrant
Thanku so much the best ever video about competitive programming
Tips:-
-first of all learning question approach
-recognising the patterns ........
THANKU FOR UPLOADING THIS TYPE OF CONTENT .
This was much needed,I was feeling guilty in checking out solutions without knowing anything
Been there!
Same here 😔
How would you choose which questions to like learn solutions from and which ones to solve?
This is very helpful. I'm in the quantity phase of learning. I've "solved" 45 leetcodes and about 3 of them by myself (easys).
This is a great video, thanks for sharing
Thank you so much!
super helpful. thanks!
Really valuable, nice.
Thanks for the wonderful rundown aiding DSA practise
Do you have the set of questions for the DS and A types for practise and test?
One of things I don't see a lot but I feel is kinda important: to tinker with the solutions.
This is how I approach:
-> Try all approaches until I no longer can think of any way. If for the last 5-10 mins I can't think of a solution, I goto the solutions/discussions tab. The method name is mentioned in the heading of most solutions. Then, I tried to implement the same method on that question on my own.
If I still can't figure it out, I view the code in the solutions tab. Copy-Paste, understand the code, dry-run and then tinker with the code. Tinkering is kinda important because it forces u to understand the code before changing anything.
Even for questions I am not able to solve in contests, I do the same. It helped me no idea if it works for anybody else.
Thanks for sharing!
Thanks a lot this was very motivating for me who is a beginner at leetcoding and competitive programming, this is exactly how i learn when i have less time but needed someone to back me up
You got this!
It took a year? I've got a week.
Really good advice
i just did a interview today, got smashed by an easy question of hash map... Nervousism is your worst enemy for sure
💻 Free 12-Week Leetcode Preparation Guide notion template with more in depth tips: techtribe.beehiiv.com/subscribe
👨🏻💻 Join the free discord server: discord.gg/n66UKukj
My problem is that I have a pattern where I grind leetcode for a few months, then I get busy with job/life or I lose interest as I am not actively interviewing. Again after a few months, I feel a bit guilty and I start again, back to square one. I have to solve easy questions and start the grind again. It's an infinite loop !
So don't stop.
There are no shortcut guys, stop your search for shortcuts instead do practise and be consistent❤
A lot of people are grinding leetcode for months, but are stuck between 1400-1500 contest ratings. Some tips work and we should be flexible and adaptable to trying out new ways if the traditional ain't producing results. I hope you understood what i said bro.
Everyone stucks , it dosent matter whose youtube videos they watched , but the thing that matter most is there self belief
months are nothing you need years. @@geekcurry5936
Absolutely agree, and I'd add that I saw a much better progress curve when I practiced the way I mentioned, compared to investing hours into solving new questions. Consistency is a must, but once you are consistent, make sure you're also consistently practicing in the best way possible.
@daveburji right! Practice smart, not hard.
great advice
In the 15 years I have been using UA-cam this might actually be the one useful video when it comes to learning algorithms and data structures. When I was a junior I also fell in the pitfall of thinking I should be the one coming up with the brilliant solutions to every problem. It took me years to realize I just need to learn thought patterns from other people before I start solving complex issues. This video is exactly how I learned DSA. Don't be too hard on yourself.
Thank you for sharing!
Thanks...Great video! Fortunately this is what I've been doing too on Leetcode that helped me get better and consistent. ✌🏻
But I m not so much into dev, what would you suggest to me, how much does that impact? Should I focus strongly on dev as well?
Thank you! For your question, it depends what is asked on the interviews for the roles you're interviewing for
Everyone has their preferred way to prepare. If you are very short on time - this is indeed the best way. It’s the same approach you’d use to pass an exam. Study answers and should you encounter a similar enough question - you’ll be able to solve it based on your memory.
The biggest downside here is that with each question, you are discarding an opportunity to improve general technical problem solving. My recommendation would be to try to solve the question yourself first, but time box it to 20-40 minutes. If you were not able to solve the question within time limit. Then look at solution, study it and find out what are the things that stood in the way of you getting the right answer - this is the important part. Did you get tunnel visioned on specific data structure? Did you not consider a multi pass approach? Did you make wrong assumption about optimal time complexity? Figure out a way to make sure this doesn’t derail you again. Then move on to the next question.
With each new question your “weaknesses” shouldn’t be repeating themselves - if they do - it’s likely that you are not improving your general problem solving. You can still pass a lot of interviews based on good memory and pattern recognition. But ideally you want to train for more general problem solving too.
Yes! This is the correct way to learn.
Sound like something i wanna hear to satisfy myself so liking the vid
I started leetcode just now and managed to solve half of blind 75 and around total of 100 problem and I feel like complete begineer still but I definitely can see myself improving
take it a bit of a step further and write unit tests for the coding challenge solutions. Ask chatGPT if you need help doing it but that helps get a better understanding of the logic. You can even set a breakpoint on the unit test and run the debugger and step thru the method under test and watch it all unfold
Most honest video ,I have seen till now
It was really nice , but one thing he missed was giving weekly and biweekly contest regularly . Belive me !! That's really really important. If you are able to solve 3 to 4 questions regularly in each contest then you are ready to crack any interview.
hey! can you if possible share the list you've got where there are different questions of the same pattern
www.techinterviewhandbook.org/algorithms/study-cheatsheet/
Highly recommend the lists in that link.
I love your video man
Thank you!
100% agree
tbh hearing it took a year of practising for leetcode to get good is incredibly disheartening to hear as an experienced software engineer. not because it should take you less but rather because that is a HUGE waste of a person's free time that should be spent gaining real experience in a real job. it's a sad state of affairs that newcomers (and often seniors) must be subjected to such arbitrary tests just to land jobs doing fairly standard cookie cutter software development work on the other end.
It’s like practicing for SAT over actually learning something in a meaningful way.
Standardized testing just be like that
This is actually how we learn most things in school. It took millennia for simple mathematical concepts to form our basic elementary curriculum. It would be infeasible to expect kids to come up with these concepts by themselves.
Can we get your list of questions you used for each topic and the sub list of ones you learn the pattern to and others you tried to solve ?
www.techinterviewhandbook.org/algorithms/study-cheatsheet/
Highly recommend the lists in that link.
Just do the work and stop looking for a shortcut. There’s no shortcut.
Thanks.
Hey Dave
Thank you for the video
It is very informative
I wanted to ask for a topic like binary tree. You showed us we need two sections, learn pattern and solutions and try to solve section but do you have any resource that we could use that has this segregation done for every topic?
Hey Nimisha, thank you! One will be coming up with all the tips & tricks!
this video is going to help a lot sure, but I agree I haven;t been consistent enough, there is just one point i can;t agree more maybe is that I may have low iq as back then I started coding and it's approximately 2.5 years ago and I would say I solved questions for approximately 1 year in pieces of 2-3 months as and when required but still I have difficulty in solving questions, it;s like reading a book again making mistakes maybe almost similar, i don;t want to learn the questions I just try to solve'em and still I feel like if I will start I'll end up getting stuck on the hard questions and not solving the 4th one on leetcode while giving the contest. what am I doing wrong. I've solved 400 questions on leetcode so far
How do you know which questions are similar in the "Learn Pattern and Solution" list in order to add them to the "Try to Solve" list? in short how do you create the Try to Solve list?
This is a great question, sometimes the high level topic lists are still not granular enough. I am working on releasing something for this!
Hi, I wouldn't like to know how Ai impacta o sites like this. Thanks
One of the very few interview related video.
I just want to ask one thing, How do you segregate Learn Pattern & Solution Vs Try to solve ?
Is it random ?
Sort of. When I choose a topic, I finalize a list of the common / quality questions, and then break that list into 2, one would be for learning the solution & the other for trying to solve.
Interesting video. I didn't feel when 6 minute 46 seconds Video is playing. it was so Smooth. To watch it
Thank you!
How many questions did you do daily? Also what would you recommend in terms of how long to try before looking over the solution to learn it and moving on?
I didn't do a set amount of questions everyday, I committed to a set amount of time (at least an hour). If you don't have any good ideas after 10 minutes or so, look at the solution.
@@daveburji thanks dude!
I am trying to follow the same path as u suggested but sometimes going off. Glad that you made a vid which tells me I am on the right path.
You got this!
Thank youuuu
I liked the piramid tip! It's kind of good news
To each their own but I prefer honing problem solving skills by always going in blind and staying blind. I don't even look at what other people did after I solved it.
It's just about what you want to get out of it. Neither is right or wrong. Great video explaining what he prefers and how to be effective doing it.
Also I don't think looking at solutions is a controversial take. I assumed that's what 99% of people did when they "grind leetcode".
Try projecteuler instead!
I also started leetcoding and it's fun.
I always try to solve questions on my own before looking at answer, but it is really frustrating when you get TLE and have to look for optimal solution
What’s TLE ?
Time Limit Exceeded, solution is potentially correct but not time optimized@@mattc9409
@@mattc9409time limit exceeded = TLE
Dave's point about not worrying about optimal solution is true, but if you are hitting TLE it means your solution is probably a bit too "brute force" (with rare exceptions).
I understand the frustration, but I would suggest you reframe the TLE. What it means is you have a good grasp of the basics of the problem, as you (presumably) have a solution that could be used. Now you are very well prepared to understand other ways of attacking the same problem. Look at the other people's solutions or the Editorial solutions, and enjoy learning from them.
And, as Dave said, do not obsess about the absolute most efficient solution. Find a good solution that seems like a useful pattern, that would not be difficult to apply to other similar problems. Study that one well.
awesome video! thanks
Glad you found it valuable!
A lot of videos are about how to crack the interview. Can you make a video on what you need to land the FAANG interview in the first place?
Landing an interview at big tech companies is not that hard actually because they hire a lot.
With that said, when you don't have experience, it's hard, there is more supply and less demand. If you're at that stage, check this out: ua-cam.com/video/k8NjwYNcDLM/v-deo.htmlsi=NKJM8JtkvHfSKj19
honestly companies having leetcode as a reason you get in or not is just so dumb lol
everyone knows solving a problem can take some time and it requires some searching and learning to be done
I was lucky enough to land in a company that just cared about my skillset and tested it through in my opinion easier and more verifiable means
had software engineer write some code and my job was to correct it as well as explain keywords behind it.
Then we both sat on the solution later discussed my private projects.
Then I had an app to do and send them it back and bam
just like that got a job.
Basically JEE preperation all over again, Well I know what is required then
TIME
Do I really have to practice leetcode for a year before i can crack any interview????
Can you please post the slides somewhere like a google slides?
Great video. A little fast-paced for me, but I suppose it's especially appreciated by those that play youtube at 1.5x. And thanks for not trying to teach us how to use youtube.
Thank you!
I really like programming. Building and learning new stuff. But I really hate when it's more about resolving useless things just to show I know something and trying new tactics to get hired, hacking the system of jobs, thinking about Linkedin, selling myself, networking, interviews, memorizing sintaxe. This makes me feel really miserable. I don't feel like a person anymore, but I feel like nothing more than a product.
I feel you, but that's unfortunately what we are asked to do during interviews (but not all companies ask Leetcode!).
Good stuff 👍
Thank you!
After getting a job it is hard to remain in touch with practicing, i lost touch with that and when i open i get scared to even see my own solutions ,it feels how in the world did i even think of that 😂
Great
How should a beginner, new to learning programming, begin to start attempting Leetcode problems? By this, I mean at what stage of learning should you start? I am still learning fundamentals. Thanks!
If you are a complete beginner, then starting out with Leetcode problems might be bad. Even the easy ones are not that easy. Do tutorials, write simple programs, see some examples. Understand them, re-write them yourself. It could be 1 to 3 months until you are ready for the next level.
btw you can only do this if you have developed coding fundamentals/skills required. then you can skim any problem and solve it in your head with the right approach. so yeah look at the solution after 20-30 minutes of trying to solve a problem and just find a solution that fits within your arsenal of algos/data structures that you are already familiar with. still takes lots of practice to do this though
For sure, though the foundation necessary for Leetcode is really bare bones, once you know the syntax of a programming language you can begin preparing.
As a beginner, what is a better use of my time. Building practical projects to develop and showcase real skills, or grind leet code. I find memoizing toy solutions to toy problems tedious and unpleasant. I love building things that are usefull to people. I just want to know how necessary this is
You don't really need to invest a lot of time to make projects to put on your resume, but you do need to invest a lot of time to get good at interviews.
Fire. Thanks
Thank you!
My interview is in 36hrs its my first technical 07
No time like the present.
Good luck!
You made lists. Do you have lists of the problems and how you categorized them to share?
this might help: ua-cam.com/video/UKP-Vca9Q4c/v-deo.html
@@daveburjiThank you!