I signed up for a CS degree largely based on the assumption that graphs and trees and nodes and pointers and etc are all secret CS degree topics you can only be good at if you studied them in school. Now I’m literally in a DS&A CS class and it’s so dense/academic that I literally go to YouTube and search the topic to more quickly understand it. Assuming you’re older, with a family etc, and don’t have the time to devote to learning the “art of computer science,” are you best off just jumping into LC problems and learning patterns and basic info to solve problems? I’m honestly shocked to discover that a CS graduate probably has to spend an equal amount of time/effort cranking LC than a non graduate. I assumed their degree taught them this stuff and they can kind of just wing it… Please share your experience
No school is a waste. YouTube.
I didn't go to school and we still have the same job lmfao
Boomer
Nope, non-CS major here and have done over 400 LC and got a FAANG offer. It’s just problem solving
Welcome to Amazon!
That obvious huh 🤧
Short answer - no. Long answer - “better read up on basic DS and basic algos before you start LC”
I was asked to use master theorem to determine run time during an interview once.
I would have asked that guy who pissed in his chereos this morning.
Omg this is my nightmare 😂
Plenty of competitive programmers did not study CS
Well you probably do. But take our hypothetical new CS grad. Subtract one day from studies so now no degree. Can they leetcode? Probably just as well. Now subtract one more day and add a day of leetcode specific study. I expect they leetcode as well or better. Now by induction we can see no degree is required.
This is heading straight for sorites fallacy territory. There may not be a significant difference between having a degree and being one day short of a degree, but it would be fallacious to suggest there is not a significant distinction between zero days in college and having a bachelors degree. But whether or not a cs degree, or the degree with which you have a cs degree, is relevant to getting an SWE job and being good at it, is another question imo
That's why I included the day of studying leetcode replacing school days
I have been thinking about this a lot. I think there is some sense of entitlement that comes from cs grads which is at the heart of the problem. leetcode is just an application of your learning - you can take it as interview prep but at the end of the day it’s a form of ds&a practice. It’s a deeper application than the surface learning you did in school. I remember my ds&A course - so many concepts were poorly explained and skipped over. I wish I did leetcode to solidify the learning back then - instead I had to fill the gaps when I entered the industry after I graduated. In school what happens is you don’t really deeply learn concepts most of the time. You take the course, get some grade, write the exam and then move onto the next thing. It doesn’t really evaluate how well you learned a particular concept. I’d argue this is the reason why most students / cs grads even struggle so much with DP. It’s because when they learned recursion - they didn’t really learn recursion, they couldn’t visualize recursion or draw parallels with trees, graphs or the stack. So to your statement that you are shocked that a cs grad has to spend the same if not an equal amount of time, just speaks to how ineffective most schooling is *on its own*. Assignments and exams are not enough to really learn these concepts for most. Some people are able to deeply understand these concepts from day one without the additional practice on leetcode or whatever. But for most - I’d argue leetcode is their ds&a course.
Thank you for a very thoughtful response 🙏🏼
I agree 100%
I dont understand ppl with CS degree having hard time with LC. I have no CS background at all. No previous knowledge of graphs, trees, even simple ds + algo.. Was able to get multiple offers after just 2 months of preparations while working full time.
Where?
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LC is literally nothing like actual SDE work
This
Lol same for school