Ask HN: Does LeetCode/HackerRank make you a better developer? • Hacker News Board

Nah. The secret is that interviewing skills are almost orthogonal to real life skills. It doesn't hurt to have the know-how, the chops to do the leetcode problems but it's questionable if you will ever be able to use them in the real life (unless you do really specialized work - and at that point you will need to know way more).

So 1) don't feel bad. it's just like a muscle you don't normally exercise. Start exercising it and you will get better. 2) accept that this is part of our shifty industry - it is what it is. It's pretty dumb but you will have to go through this hazing ritual every time you get a new job.

Re: Ask HN: Does LeetCode/HackerRank make you a better developer?

#16

Post by akasakahakada » Wed, Nov 01, 2023, 3:53 AM UTC

I think those textbook algorithms make you think about efficiency. But all of them suffer from being short. In reality I design low level algorithms doing real business spanning 500 lines at minimum, and the point is to utilize and alter multiple of those textbook algorithms. Sometimes you need to add more operations in the middle, sometimes you need to extract the data from the middle of one algorithm and pass it to the others. But when you equipped with those knowledge about algorithms, you know what to do immediately instead of confusing.

Re: Ask HN: Does LeetCode/HackerRank make you a better developer?

#17

Post by coldtrait » Wed, Nov 01, 2023, 5:06 AM UTC

I'm in the same boat right now. I'm an average programmer who's been doing it for around 6-7 years.

Most HN posts are way technical for me, but there's a lot of other good tech news on here.

I'm interviewing now and I feel like I chose the wrong career because leetcode is a requirement everywhere. I graduated 10 years ago and didn't even know what leetcode was until around 5 years ago. Although to be fair I wasn't taking programming as a career very seriously during my degree which was in CS, I have to embarrassingly admit.

Re: Ask HN: Does LeetCode/HackerRank make you a better developer?

#18

Post by coldtrait » Wed, Nov 01, 2023, 5:09 AM UTC

clipsy wrote: post #6

I think they make for poor evaluations, though understanding the underlying performance characteristics and limitations of common data structures and algorithms can certainly be important. That said, you'll probably need to get at least somewhat comfortable with these sorts of problems if you want to interview successfully. FWIW, the last time I was on the job hunt, I found it quicker and more helpful to use a guided…

There's almost too many wesbites that compile leetcode questions into a structured format now, which is good but the competition is also immense now.

Some good ones are:

https://seanprashad.com/leetcode-patterns/

https://neetcode.io/practice

https://www.techinterviewhandbook.org/grind75?weeks=1&hours=...

I can add more later.

Re: Ask HN: Does LeetCode/HackerRank make you a better developer?

#19

Post by bitpow » Wed, Nov 01, 2023, 11:32 AM UTC

Absolutely not.

It’s pretty well established that the skills required for interviewing in the tech industry are not in line with the skills necessary to be an effective software engineer.

Anecdotally, I’ve worked with some complete utter doofuses who somehow passed the leetcode tests, but are completely incompetent otherwise.

Re: Ask HN: Does LeetCode/HackerRank make you a better developer?

#20

Post by mortallywounded » Wed, Nov 01, 2023, 11:39 AM UTC

It may.

There's certainly a positive to being able to work through some complex/theoretical problems. These skills won't help you much at all in practical every day development, but they would certainly help take your problem solving up a level from where ever it is.

Though.. I would argue that time is probably better spent building practical knowledge/experience through project based learning.