Do you need CS degree to be good at LeetCode?

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mHBM75

New

mHBM75
Jan 17 29 Comments

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

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TOP 29 Comments
  • Infosys / Eng
    whizzkid13

    Go to company page Infosys Eng

    BIO
    grinding 24/7
    whizzkid13
    Nope, non-CS major here and have done over 400 LC and got a FAANG offer. It’s just problem solving
    Jan 17 4
  • LC is literally nothing like actual SDE work
    Jan 17 2
  • Amazon
    KUYW05

    Go to company page Amazon

    KUYW05
    No school is a waste. YouTube.
    Jan 17 4
    • Jan 18
    • New
      mHBM75

      New

      mHBM75
      OP
      I already have a master’s degree & bachelor’s from Ivy League schools. My case is I’m older and just picked different majors, now having to go back to get that CS knowledge, but realizing it doesn’t actually help much with interviews or with work…
      Jan 18
  • Amazon
    oGhakI

    Go to company page Amazon

    oGhakI
    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.
    Jan 17 3
  • Zoox
    ZARcoin

    Go to company page Zoox

    ZARcoin
    I was asked to use master theorem to determine run time during an interview once.
    Jan 17 3