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Ask HN: How do you make time for side projects and Leetcode grinding

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Re: Ask HN: How do you make time for side projects and Leetcode grinding

#51

Post by _lvbh »

thebigspacefuck wrote: post #18

Grinding leetcode is inefficient. What you should be doing is familiarizing yourself with the common patterns you might expect to see in an interview. Look at the blind 75 and https://seanprashad.com/leetcode-patterns/ . Initially, you don’t need to solve any of the problems from scratch. Look up the problem on YouTube and someone will walk you through it. This will build your intuition of when to reach for a heap or…

This is good advice. Grinding leetcode literally almost killed me. Got a high fever after trying to go through it blind (as in without knowing anything about it and the patterns) and somehow almost sleepwalked off the balcony (20th floor)

Re: Ask HN: How do you make time for side projects and Leetcode grinding

#52

Post by jeffrallen »

Spend the time you'd spend on leetcode to build a network instead. Give a talk at a meetup. A good topic is "how I used tool X to debug problem Y". At the end of the talk mention you are building your network, etc.

If you are in Switzerland, drop me a line.

Re: Ask HN: How do you make time for side projects and Leetcode grinding

#53

Post by b20000 »

losteric wrote: post #50
b20000 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you just confirmed you don’t need any actual skill and just learn the solutions by heart to get hired

That's a disingenuous take. It's extremely unlikely you'll get asked any of these specific questions, but very likely you'll be asked something in the general space. Core knowledge extrapolates... to learn system design, one studies the design of "solved" systems, thus learning to solve for new design problems. If a company is asking leetcode questions verbatim, they probably don't care so much about that part of the…

i have been a software engineer for 20 years and never had to implement any of this stuff myself in my career. the last time i did was in my master’s program in CS. in contrast i’ve had to implement custom memory allocators and many other non trivial algorithms which cannot be implemented in 10 minutes but take days to design and implement.

Re: Ask HN: How do you make time for side projects and Leetcode grinding

#54

Post by b20000 »

hnfong wrote: post #45
b20000 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you just confirmed you don’t need any actual skill and just learn the solutions by heart to get hired

If learning how to solve problems by reading a book is "memorizing solutions by heart" then yes, that's how most people do things. Look, as much as you might want to believe you (and everyone else in the industry) are geniuses, the fact is that we memorize a lot of stuff that were painstakingly invented or discovered by great minds in the past. If that is "don't need any actual skill" according to your dictionary, th…

engineering is about creativity and practice and not about memorizing standard solutions. leetcode does not test the skills that matter.

Re: Ask HN: How do you make time for side projects and Leetcode grinding

#55

Post by docandrew »

thebigspacefuck wrote: post #18

Grinding leetcode is inefficient. What you should be doing is familiarizing yourself with the common patterns you might expect to see in an interview. Look at the blind 75 and https://seanprashad.com/leetcode-patterns/ . Initially, you don’t need to solve any of the problems from scratch. Look up the problem on YouTube and someone will walk you through it. This will build your intuition of when to reach for a heap or…

The “tips” section on that linked page is really good!

Re: Ask HN: How do you make time for side projects and Leetcode grinding

#56

Post by dennis_jeeves2 »

cebert no advise here, but let's just say I feel for you.

That many programmers have to post something like this here shows how nerd-psychopath (I mean the interviewers) a large portion of the interviewer programmers are. A slave hiring another slave by holding the hiree to a misplaced sense of loyalty, and standards of their sorry profession. A sobering reminder of how people are their own worst enemies.

Re: Ask HN: How do you make time for side projects and Leetcode grinding

#57

Post by SomewhatLikely »

elicksaur wrote: post #34

I often wonder what problems could be solved in the world if so much free programming time wasn’t wasted on leetcode.

Even among just software devs I'm guessing far more time is wasted on passive consumption like TikTok, YouTube, etc.

Re: Ask HN: How do you make time for side projects and Leetcode grinding

#59

Post by Jtsummers »

pylua wrote: post #5
hamdouni wrote: post #3

50-60 hours weeks seems too much, even if it is semi-regularly, to have a side project. If you can "cut" 2-3 hours a week from your job, it helps to make space for some tinkering. If you can, get up earlier every morning, before everybody wake up in the house. You must be very motivated if you are not a morning guy. Other solution is to have a fixed schedule, like having a meeting with yourself, with a "not disturb"…

For me, it is not the hours, but the context switch between work, side project, and family that is difficult .

The context switching, for me, is made easier by separating the contexts in space and time (NB: No kids yet).

For space, I mean parts of the home or going to an office (I telework occasionally, but have lab work that cannot be moved or done from home). My home office is upstairs, I don't spend much time in that area unless I'm working on a computer. The sitting room (my reading space a lot of the time, future kid play area) is separate from the kitchen and living (TV) room. The home gym (such as it is, yoga mat and rowing machine) is in the basement (living in CO has a perk, nearly every house has a basement which is useful for storage, exercise space, and hobby space).

Even virtual spaces. My home office has, if I brought it home, two computers: My personal PC and my work laptop. They are not the same, I cannot access work stuff from my personal system. The only work app I have on my phone is Duo for MFA. When my telework day ends, I shove that laptop back into its bag and don't open it again until the next day. So if I'm working on a side project or even just gaming, I cannot easily go back to work.

For time, I find intermediating activities to separate contexts if needed (mostly work and home life). The commute is this, but when teleworking I'd go for a walk, do yard work, or exercise (often all three, no kids so that part of my day is still pretty much mine). Once I'm done with the physical activities or commute, I'm in a new context and have cleared my head from work. This works even if they're in the same space. Going back to virtual spaces, switching from work to hobby programming is easier if I've left the office for a bit.

Re: Ask HN: How do you make time for side projects and Leetcode grinding

#60

Post by pillefitz »

b20000 wrote: post #54
hnfong wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If learning how to solve problems by reading a book is "memorizing solutions by heart" then yes, that's how most people do things. Look, as much as you might want to believe you (and everyone else in the industry) are geniuses, the fact is that we memorize a lot of stuff that were painstakingly invented or discovered by great minds in the past. If that is "don't need any actual skill" according to your dictionary, th…

engineering is about creativity and practice and not about memorizing standard solutions. leetcode does not test the skills that matter.

Pattern recognition is pretty much at the core of creative work in an engineering context, of which memorizing existing patterns is the first half.
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