AlgoDrill is so futuristic, that Gemini 3 included it in the HN front page 10 years from now (#5): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46205632
what a terrible future
Show HN: AlgoDrill – Interactive drills to stop forgetting LeetCode patterns
111–118 of 118 posts
Re: Show HN: AlgoDrill – Interactive drills to stop forgetting LeetCode patterns
#112Bought it but please fix the variable names issue mentioned by other people here
Thanks for buying it and mentioning this.
You are right that the current checker is still too strict about matching my variable names and structure, and that is not where I want it to stay.
I am working on a Python validator that compares the parsed code as an AST instead of raw text, so you can use your own variable names and small structural changes as long as the logic is the same. I am aiming to have the first version of this in by the end of December.
After that I want two clear ways to practice. One mode tracks the editorial solution for people who want to drill that exact version, while still allowing harmless differences like different names and small adjustments in structure. The other mode treats your own code as the reference and lets the objectives and feedback adapt to the way you wrote the solution, instead of holding everyone to one fixed template.
If you have thoughts on what would make the checker feel natural and fair for you, feel free to share them here and I will keep them in mind as I make these changes.
Re: Show HN: AlgoDrill – Interactive drills to stop forgetting LeetCode patterns
#113Any company using leetcode as their primary way to assess competency is time wasting, soulless black hole unworthy of any real talent.
Any company still using LeetCode at all during interviews is signaling that either they are run like a frat house, or are so dim/indifferent that they're unwittingly cargo-culting one.
Or it's just big corpo policy that everyone except HR hates and is just hard to change.
Re: Show HN: AlgoDrill – Interactive drills to stop forgetting LeetCode patterns
#114Re: Show HN: AlgoDrill – Interactive drills to stop forgetting LeetCode patterns
#115[deleted]
Re: Show HN: AlgoDrill – Interactive drills to stop forgetting LeetCode patterns
#116What threw me off is the expectation that I use the same variable names and exact same code structure. There are many ways to implement effectively the same thing. I understand that it would be very challenging to implement a way to validate solutions in this way, but memorizing exact fragments of code feels like it's optimizing for the wrong thing.
Thanks for taking the time to try it and write this up. You are right that the current check still leans too much toward my reference solution. It already ignores formatting and whitespace, but it is still quite literal about structure and identifiers, which nudges you toward writing my version instead of your own. There are many valid ways to express the same idea and I do not want to lock people into only mine. Whe…
> people who want to learn that exact version for an interview
What is the value in memorizing a specific solution line by line?
Re: Show HN: AlgoDrill – Interactive drills to stop forgetting LeetCode patterns
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any company still using LeetCode at all during interviews is signaling that either they are run like a frat house, or are so dim/indifferent that they're unwittingly cargo-culting one.
Or it's just big corpo policy that everyone except HR hates and is just hard to change.
I like your optimistic theory.
I'm the type to talk with HR about when the company could do something better, and some of them appreciate it.
(Most recent was when a company was starting each Monday morning with a miserable cross-hemisphere all-hands meeting videoconf... that sucked the life out of the recharged energy people came back from the weekend with, for the potentially rewarding work we were doing. The company improved.)
Re: Show HN: AlgoDrill – Interactive drills to stop forgetting LeetCode patterns
#118What threw me off is the expectation that I use the same variable names and exact same code structure. There are many ways to implement effectively the same thing. I understand that it would be very challenging to implement a way to validate solutions in this way, but memorizing exact fragments of code feels like it's optimizing for the wrong thing.
ugh, this is the same reason I would fail CS assignments because the teacher would mark it that way!