“I wasnt bad, I was just getting started” needed that! Thank you!

Learn Solutions is the Best Advice as an Beginner

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.

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.

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

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.

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!

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!

bro genuinely thank you !!

Awesome!!! All software engineers ultimately got to this conclusion after a long period of struggle with LeetCode. You made the process more systematic

The best leetcode guidance I have ever seen. Thanks!

WOW just WOW love it The quality of the video is so good tysm god bless you brother!!!!

This is such a smart approach!

Now This ! is Genuine Authentic Content ❤❤

i needed this, thank you!

Thanks a lot to give some of the best resources and advice .

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.

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.

thanks Dave. it was really helpful

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.

Great content and great editing skills!

This video really helped thank you so much. I feel confident again 🦍

Your idea is what I was following.😊

thank you for inspiration, great content!

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.

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 .

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 ✨

Keep making quality content :) I have subscribed to your channel today.

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

damn this is eye opener

This is very good advice. ❤

I'm following the same strategy and it's very helpful 😄

Wonderful insights 🎉🎉❤

solid advice. wish i saw this 2 years ago

Starting the leetcode grind tomorrow with advice based from this video! Might update this thread weekly cuz why not.

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

Really valuable, nice.

super helpful. thanks!

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

This was much needed,I was feeling guilty in checking out solutions without knowing anything

Most honest video ,I have seen till now

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.

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?

Really good advice

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

Yes! This is the correct way to learn.

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?

Sound like something i wanna hear to satisfy myself so liking the vid

- 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 advice

100% agree

In the 15 years I have been using UKposts 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.

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.

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

How would you choose which questions to like learn solutions from and which ones to solve?

Thank youuuu

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?

Thanks.

I love your video man

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

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.

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 !

awesome video! thanks

Fire. Thanks

hey! can you if possible share the list you've got where there are different questions of the same pattern

Interesting video. I didn't feel when 6 minute 46 seconds Video is playing. it was so Smooth. To watch it

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.

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

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 ?

I liked the piramid tip! It's kind of good news

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.

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.

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!

There are no shortcut guys, stop your search for shortcuts instead do practise and be consistent❤

Good stuff 👍

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?

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

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.

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 ?

i just did a interview today, got smashed by an easy question of hash map... Nervousism is your worst enemy for sure

Hi, I wouldn't like to know how Ai impacta o sites like this. Thanks

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

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.

Someone said honestly!!!!!

The editing is preventing me from finishing this. The key press sound effect, the captions, the memes…I’m feeling my brain implode.

Basically JEE preperation all over again, Well I know what is required then TIME

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?

Great

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?

My interview is in 36hrs its my first technical 07 No time like the present.

Even I learned this the hard way !! Here's a like

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 video, but small suggestion about the background music, can it be little lower than your voice. Music is great but more interested to hear what you are saying.

king

Enjoyed the video a lot

Very interesting point that on the harder topics, the questions are actually easier because they are the more popular ones that you've seen before. Also, I can't believe you were never asked dynamic programming. I feel like people go crazy for DP problems. The one year of consistent practice couldn't be more true. I can't stand the people that say "I prepped leetcode for a few weeks and was able to pass interviews." These people are an anomaly and either exceptionally smart or have already put in months of the grind and are simply refreshing. This is a LONG process and if you want to make it into big tech, you need to really commit to it!

Can you please post the slides somewhere like a google slides?

It took a year? I've got a week.

You made lists. Do you have lists of the problems and how you categorized them to share?