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Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
121–130 of 157 posts
Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
#122Does anyone else just enjoy leetcode? I think it's fun.
I enjoy it as a standalone. I hated it at first, but it's actually quite fun as a standalone activity.
I don't enjoy the fact that being a Professional Leetcoder (not a Professional Software Engineer) seems to be the requirement to successfully and reliably (as opposed to eeking through with luck) pass the interview gate at most of the better companies to work at (I'm not just referring to FAANG).
I don't enjoy the fact that I need to put on a circus show act that pretends I can serendipitously come up with the optimal solution to a problem handling all obscure edge cases within 20 minutes.
I don't enjoy the fact that almost everything I do at work is close to meaningless for career progression because very little of it is relevent to passing the interview (usually only touched upon in a "system design" round).
Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
#123I started doing leetcode when the pandemic hit. I wanted to be ready in case I got fired and I have to do an interview... surprisingly I fell in love with it. I am one of those ppl that writes codes in their head, so I just look at a problem and go on with my day until I have a solution. Then I write it and test it out. It's enjoyable to me, and I have been forced to learn a lot of CS concepts I had forgotten and tec…
I sure as shit hope you don't breeze through. Why should practicing mental leetcode questions prepare you for a job interview in the real world? In my company, you wouldn't breeze through, because we don't participate in 'whiteboard culture', or maybe those sorts of companies you have self selected out of?
Your company isn't the only one in the world though, and the sad reality is that many, many (I'd say in the US - most) companies use leetcode interviews.
If you become a Master of Leetcode, you benefit from massive horizontal scaling that will make you ready to interview at a huge range of companies.
As the parent posted, hate the game, not the player, especially since nearly everyone here is in no position to change the game.
Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
#124> Instead, pick a book or a course that teaches ~100 well represented problems. And don't pick a book or course that has only problems. Pick something that teaches you to think about them.
The site doesn't actually list any books or courses that do this. It just states that bouncing around is bad in https://leetcodetherapy.com/interview-prep-today, but it gives no specifics for the right way of doing it. Maybe the reason that guy is bouncing around is that there IS no resource that steps through "100 well represented problems."
Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
pick some from each pattern. Adjust more or less based on your comfort with each pattern eg: pick more sliding window pattern, dp, greedy vs pick less for binary tree/dfs problems.
This is where I’m stuck: how do we know which patterns are possibilities? I’ve never seen a “patterns for leet code” website, yet. Further, how does a naive person know which pattern applies to a problem? Without that knowledge, how can I vet a learning resource and know I’m not wasting my time?
> i’ve never seen a “patterns for leet code” website, yet.
https://hackernoon.com/14-patterns-to-ace-any-coding-intervi...
> Further, how does a naive person know which pattern applies to a problem? Without that knowledge, how can I vet a learning resource and know I’m not wasting my time?
Problems in leetcode have tags under "related topics" and you can look at discussions to find out the pattern.
That said, sometimes its not simple pattern matching. Its an itution that you can develop if you keep solving leetcode problems.
Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Other LeetCode questions are too tedious or time-consuming to do on a whiteboard in an hour. Afaik all leetcode problems are from contest where thousands of ppl solve 4 in 1 hr. Its unlikely that there are questions which cannot be solved in 1 hr whiteboard.
Let’s hope they don’t upgrade the difficulty to that level. It’s already 2 in 45 minutes.
They will have to soon. I think most ppl seem to hit that target pretty easily these days.
Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
#127When starting with Leetcode you face two questions:
1. Which ones should I do to be prepared?
2. For a given problem how do I find the knowledge that should have helped me recognise and solve it?
Imho, the Competitive Programmer’s Handbook [1] does answer these, every trick and pattern is explained in the most succinct way, in the order you would want to progress on leetcode to see all the basic problem formulations. Afaik every random interview question would fit into one of these.
Let me know if you know a better one.
Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
#128> Leetcode and other websites have conditioned us to think that we need complication.
A paradox that's plagued me my whole career is that simple abstractions are less approachable than complex ones. Simple abstractions almost by definition create bubbles of private language, making it hard to use existing knowledge to bootstrap into new knowledge. Complex abstractions don't have this problem.
I don't think Leetcode has conditioned anyone to think they need complication. I think beginners just find complexity more tractable, at least at first. Grappling with it feels like learning and doing. Leetcode rode that wave to where it is today.
Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
#129You have given words to my lifelong struggle.
Honestly I have done great in every part of life except competitions.
During my school I always score good marks because there were only few books ,( to reach the bar ) , after that due to my issue with perfection, I have always put extra effort and I was successful . I had a very fulfilling schooling with great academic as well sporting results ( National Level Table tennis player) .
Then comes entrance exams . As a person who have always done well in tests , encountered a whole new world of competition. I started reading lot of books for the same subject , never satisfied , I had been a victim of maximum resources and minimum learning. Too be honest I never reached the bar to pass the entrance. Had I been focused on few resources I am sure the story would have been different.
I took engineering and again make the same mistake of maximization of resources and never reached the bar. Completed engineering , now comes the interviews , again made the same mistake. I had lost confidence in all my abilities and stopped applying for roles.
After few months I started freelancing and worked well with clients because there my maximum resources model worked. Now I have significant money to take 6 months off and really start from bottom at preparing interviews.
Hope it helps somebody.
Re: Avoiding Leetcode Anxiety
#130I started doing leetcode when the pandemic hit. I wanted to be ready in case I got fired and I have to do an interview... surprisingly I fell in love with it. I am one of those ppl that writes codes in their head, so I just look at a problem and go on with my day until I have a solution. Then I write it and test it out. It's enjoyable to me, and I have been forced to learn a lot of CS concepts I had forgotten and tec…
What do you love about leetcode problems? Mindset makes a huge difference.
I'm a simple man, I see "Accepted" and my solution is faster and more efficient than "X%" it makes my day. Maybe I am just the type of person who just enjoys coding for fun.
Also I forgot to mention, one of the reasons I started doing leetcode was our team started a new project in python. Having never written a line of code in it, being a javascript developer for most of my career, I needed the shortest path to proficiency. Solving a bunch of leetcode questions in python also helped me get a grip on the language.