What is LeetCode.com?
It’s a website where people–mostly software engineers–practice their coding skills. It’s pretty similar to sites like HackerRank & Topcoder which will rank your code written for a particular problem against the ones submitted by other users
People who use them
Leetcode gets primarily used for two use cases:
- Solve interesting data structure problems
- Prepare and practice for coding interviews 🤔
Purpose of this post
I never had a clear understanding when it comes to data structures and algorithms, so being a software engineer for the last 12 years, I thought it’s not a bad idea to at least start now. So as of Dec 2019, I became a premium member in Leetcode and committed myself to get as much value out of 150$ that I spent on the membership fees. Leetcode is like an ocean; it has closer to 2000+ questions, which keeps growing day by day.
In fact, this was my exact reaction when I open the website for the first time after looking at the number of questions and categories it had
In this post, let me explain some of the methods I developed over some time, which helped me to understand and learn about these data structures & algorithms.
Get the basics right — Don’t run too fast
Most people new to Leetcode directly jump into solving the problems without getting a proper understanding of the underlying data structures like a linked list, stack, queue, tree, etc. Trust me this is a bad idea
I would recommend spending some time understanding these data structures, which are the building blocks for solving any problems.
Even if you are not able to go through all the data structures, at least get a strong understanding of the linked list and _binary trees. _Fortunately, there are some excellent materials created by Standford, which can help you with this:
Linked List:
- http://cslibrary.stanford.edu/103/LinkedListBasics.pdf
- http://cslibrary.stanford.edu/105/LinkedListProblems.pdf
Binary tree
Method to madness
Leetcode has many categories and a whole lot of questions in each of them, so it’s essential to come up with a method that could help you to understand these concepts. Learning with LeetCode is a long process, and it will take time, so one thing that I clearly understood is you have to keep the enthusiasm and eagerness to learn high if you want to go through the journey.
If you are a beginner, then use the below flowchart to learn things and gradually increase the complexity of the problems that you solve. It also helps in understanding the concepts well so you can reapply those techniques in the subsequent problems.
Sequence for solving problems
Stages are numbers in red circles, and dotted lines are entirely optional for proceeding to the next stage. When you are done with stage 3 depending upon your motivation, you will end up either doing “Monthly coding challenges” or “attending interviews” (both are fun)
#coding #leetcode #data-structures #problem-solving #algorithms #algorithms
