Leetcode problem of the day

Over the past couple of years I have adopted a habit of completing the Technically, LeetCode calls these LeetCode being a business, they also sell “time travel certificates” that allow me “travel back in time” to solve a past day’s problem and keep a streak alive. They also provide one extra weekly problem to paid subscribers. I believe you can’t technically complete the monthly streak unless you become a paid subscriber and solve those. I don’t worry about the streak mechanic, although I certainly don’t begrudge LeetCode the attempt to generate some cashflow from the service they provide. Sometimes I miss days, either because of travel or family or because the problem is legitimately too hard for me to solve. I just pick up the next day. One of my favorite aspects is reviewing the official Solution explanation, or the user-generate discussion thread, after I’ve solved a problem myself. I gain a lot from reviewing other users’ code and comparing their solutions to mine, especially when my solution works but is slow. LeetCode times submissions and shows the result, unless the code is so inefficient that it triggers a “Time Limit Exceeded” error. The rhythm of solving one data structures and algorithms problem every morning is a terrific routine for programming practice. There’s obviously a lot more to software engineering than compact, competitive programming-style and interview-style challenges. But I always feel like a musician practicing scales or a basketball player pra...

tl;dr: You’re doing it wrong. Use The struggle is real Have you been tackling LeetCode problems but don’t feel like you’re actually getting better in interviews? Feel like you’re able to come up with solutions but never make it to the optimal one? Do you keep running out of time before you can finish the question? Are you constantly having a tough time making it through difficult questions? As a former Google software engineer and now career and interview coach, many of my clients have had this problem over the years. And if you were my client, I’d tell you that the problem isn’t that you’re not smart enough. Nor is it that you’re not working hard enough. You’re probably practicing wrong. Maybe you’ve been working through the it’s not gonna help you very much, no matter how many questions you practice. Anyone who’s done weightlifting in the gym knows that good form and flexibility are essential. Those elements are necessary for getting the most out of your workout. Similarly, you need to practice good problem solving techniques when you’re doing LeetCode questions so that you’re maximizing the time you spend. Keeping the real interview in mind Many of you practice LeetCode problems incorrectly because you may be unfamiliar with how technical interviews work in real life. Let’s break that down real quick. More than anything else, you need to understand that technical interviewing is a collaborative problem-solving exercise. The real interview won’t be you working through a ...

Over the past couple of years I have adopted a habit of completing the Technically, LeetCode calls these LeetCode being a business, they also sell “time travel certificates” that allow me “travel back in time” to solve a past day’s problem and keep a streak alive. They also provide one extra weekly problem to paid subscribers. I believe you can’t technically complete the monthly streak unless you become a paid subscriber and solve those. I don’t worry about the streak mechanic, although I certainly don’t begrudge LeetCode the attempt to generate some cashflow from the service they provide. Sometimes I miss days, either because of travel or family or because the problem is legitimately too hard for me to solve. I just pick up the next day. One of my favorite aspects is reviewing the official Solution explanation, or the user-generate discussion thread, after I’ve solved a problem myself. I gain a lot from reviewing other users’ code and comparing their solutions to mine, especially when my solution works but is slow. LeetCode times submissions and shows the result, unless the code is so inefficient that it triggers a “Time Limit Exceeded” error. The rhythm of solving one data structures and algorithms problem every morning is a terrific routine for programming practice. There’s obviously a lot more to software engineering than compact, competitive programming-style and interview-style challenges. But I always feel like a musician practicing scales or a basketball player pra...

tl;dr: You’re doing it wrong. Use The struggle is real Have you been tackling LeetCode problems but don’t feel like you’re actually getting better in interviews? Feel like you’re able to come up with solutions but never make it to the optimal one? Do you keep running out of time before you can finish the question? Are you constantly having a tough time making it through difficult questions? As a former Google software engineer and now career and interview coach, many of my clients have had this problem over the years. And if you were my client, I’d tell you that the problem isn’t that you’re not smart enough. Nor is it that you’re not working hard enough. You’re probably practicing wrong. Maybe you’ve been working through the it’s not gonna help you very much, no matter how many questions you practice. Anyone who’s done weightlifting in the gym knows that good form and flexibility are essential. Those elements are necessary for getting the most out of your workout. Similarly, you need to practice good problem solving techniques when you’re doing LeetCode questions so that you’re maximizing the time you spend. Keeping the real interview in mind Many of you practice LeetCode problems incorrectly because you may be unfamiliar with how technical interviews work in real life. Let’s break that down real quick. More than anything else, you need to understand that technical interviewing is a collaborative problem-solving exercise. The real interview won’t be you working through a ...

tl;dr: You’re doing it wrong. Use The struggle is real Have you been tackling LeetCode problems but don’t feel like you’re actually getting better in interviews? Feel like you’re able to come up with solutions but never make it to the optimal one? Do you keep running out of time before you can finish the question? Are you constantly having a tough time making it through difficult questions? As a former Google software engineer and now career and interview coach, many of my clients have had this problem over the years. And if you were my client, I’d tell you that the problem isn’t that you’re not smart enough. Nor is it that you’re not working hard enough. You’re probably practicing wrong. Maybe you’ve been working through the it’s not gonna help you very much, no matter how many questions you practice. Anyone who’s done weightlifting in the gym knows that good form and flexibility are essential. Those elements are necessary for getting the most out of your workout. Similarly, you need to practice good problem solving techniques when you’re doing LeetCode questions so that you’re maximizing the time you spend. Keeping the real interview in mind Many of you practice LeetCode problems incorrectly because you may be unfamiliar with how technical interviews work in real life. Let’s break that down real quick. More than anything else, you need to understand that technical interviewing is a collaborative problem-solving exercise. The real interview won’t be you working through a ...

Over the past couple of years I have adopted a habit of completing the Technically, LeetCode calls these LeetCode being a business, they also sell “time travel certificates” that allow me “travel back in time” to solve a past day’s problem and keep a streak alive. They also provide one extra weekly problem to paid subscribers. I believe you can’t technically complete the monthly streak unless you become a paid subscriber and solve those. I don’t worry about the streak mechanic, although I certainly don’t begrudge LeetCode the attempt to generate some cashflow from the service they provide. Sometimes I miss days, either because of travel or family or because the problem is legitimately too hard for me to solve. I just pick up the next day. One of my favorite aspects is reviewing the official Solution explanation, or the user-generate discussion thread, after I’ve solved a problem myself. I gain a lot from reviewing other users’ code and comparing their solutions to mine, especially when my solution works but is slow. LeetCode times submissions and shows the result, unless the code is so inefficient that it triggers a “Time Limit Exceeded” error. The rhythm of solving one data structures and algorithms problem every morning is a terrific routine for programming practice. There’s obviously a lot more to software engineering than compact, competitive programming-style and interview-style challenges. But I always feel like a musician practicing scales or a basketball player pra...

Over the past couple of years I have adopted a habit of completing the Technically, LeetCode calls these LeetCode being a business, they also sell “time travel certificates” that allow me “travel back in time” to solve a past day’s problem and keep a streak alive. They also provide one extra weekly problem to paid subscribers. I believe you can’t technically complete the monthly streak unless you become a paid subscriber and solve those. I don’t worry about the streak mechanic, although I certainly don’t begrudge LeetCode the attempt to generate some cashflow from the service they provide. Sometimes I miss days, either because of travel or family or because the problem is legitimately too hard for me to solve. I just pick up the next day. One of my favorite aspects is reviewing the official Solution explanation, or the user-generate discussion thread, after I’ve solved a problem myself. I gain a lot from reviewing other users’ code and comparing their solutions to mine, especially when my solution works but is slow. LeetCode times submissions and shows the result, unless the code is so inefficient that it triggers a “Time Limit Exceeded” error. The rhythm of solving one data structures and algorithms problem every morning is a terrific routine for programming practice. There’s obviously a lot more to software engineering than compact, competitive programming-style and interview-style challenges. But I always feel like a musician practicing scales or a basketball player pra...

tl;dr: You’re doing it wrong. Use The struggle is real Have you been tackling LeetCode problems but don’t feel like you’re actually getting better in interviews? Feel like you’re able to come up with solutions but never make it to the optimal one? Do you keep running out of time before you can finish the question? Are you constantly having a tough time making it through difficult questions? As a former Google software engineer and now career and interview coach, many of my clients have had this problem over the years. And if you were my client, I’d tell you that the problem isn’t that you’re not smart enough. Nor is it that you’re not working hard enough. You’re probably practicing wrong. Maybe you’ve been working through the it’s not gonna help you very much, no matter how many questions you practice. Anyone who’s done weightlifting in the gym knows that good form and flexibility are essential. Those elements are necessary for getting the most out of your workout. Similarly, you need to practice good problem solving techniques when you’re doing LeetCode questions so that you’re maximizing the time you spend. Keeping the real interview in mind Many of you practice LeetCode problems incorrectly because you may be unfamiliar with how technical interviews work in real life. Let’s break that down real quick. More than anything else, you need to understand that technical interviewing is a collaborative problem-solving exercise. The real interview won’t be you working through a ...

tl;dr: You’re doing it wrong. Use The struggle is real Have you been tackling LeetCode problems but don’t feel like you’re actually getting better in interviews? Feel like you’re able to come up with solutions but never make it to the optimal one? Do you keep running out of time before you can finish the question? Are you constantly having a tough time making it through difficult questions? As a former Google software engineer and now career and interview coach, many of my clients have had this problem over the years. And if you were my client, I’d tell you that the problem isn’t that you’re not smart enough. Nor is it that you’re not working hard enough. You’re probably practicing wrong. Maybe you’ve been working through the it’s not gonna help you very much, no matter how many questions you practice. Anyone who’s done weightlifting in the gym knows that good form and flexibility are essential. Those elements are necessary for getting the most out of your workout. Similarly, you need to practice good problem solving techniques when you’re doing LeetCode questions so that you’re maximizing the time you spend. Keeping the real interview in mind Many of you practice LeetCode problems incorrectly because you may be unfamiliar with how technical interviews work in real life. Let’s break that down real quick. More than anything else, you need to understand that technical interviewing is a collaborative problem-solving exercise. The real interview won’t be you working through a ...

Over the past couple of years I have adopted a habit of completing the Technically, LeetCode calls these LeetCode being a business, they also sell “time travel certificates” that allow me “travel back in time” to solve a past day’s problem and keep a streak alive. They also provide one extra weekly problem to paid subscribers. I believe you can’t technically complete the monthly streak unless you become a paid subscriber and solve those. I don’t worry about the streak mechanic, although I certainly don’t begrudge LeetCode the attempt to generate some cashflow from the service they provide. Sometimes I miss days, either because of travel or family or because the problem is legitimately too hard for me to solve. I just pick up the next day. One of my favorite aspects is reviewing the official Solution explanation, or the user-generate discussion thread, after I’ve solved a problem myself. I gain a lot from reviewing other users’ code and comparing their solutions to mine, especially when my solution works but is slow. LeetCode times submissions and shows the result, unless the code is so inefficient that it triggers a “Time Limit Exceeded” error. The rhythm of solving one data structures and algorithms problem every morning is a terrific routine for programming practice. There’s obviously a lot more to software engineering than compact, competitive programming-style and interview-style challenges. But I always feel like a musician practicing scales or a basketball player pra...