Grinding leetcode, these problems aren't getting easier or more intuitive, how should I change my approach?

IBM
ibm9

Go to company page IBM

ibm9
Sep 11, 2020 8 Comments

Been grinding leetcode for the last 2.5 months, where I study 1-2 hours a day every day. Have only completed 60 so far (36 easy 17 medium) + 7 on Grokking. The reason it's so little is because I would spend a week on each topic trying to understand what it even is via YouTube videos before attempting related/topic tagged questions.

From a conceptual standpoint, most of these topics make perfect sense. Graphs and trees make sense as does bfs/dfs through recursion on them. LinkedLists also make sense, with their next pointer. Dictionaries with their key/val. Binary search with the midpoint, low, high. Sliding window for subarrays. Lists/Arrays I've know for years as have most developers. And so on.

Problem is that although I understand these concepts I still fail at solving most of these problems. The applications of these concepts is always so varied and it almost seems like there are tricks to most of these problems that are unique. Most of the 60 that I 'solved' I would look at the question and often have no idea where to even begin. Sometimes I would make an attempt and fail miserably. Rarely would I be able to solve it, and I can count on hands how many would run on first try (rarely optimally). In the cases where I can't solve I end up looking at the solution in the discussion, sometimes understand it and if not then watch YouTube video for that particular problem to understand it. Then implement it. But it seems like I'm just short-term memorizing some trick, and even when I do a 'related' problem I do not know how to solve it since 'related' is often not so related. Also I'm not sure if the solutions I'm implementing after looking are sticking in memory. Am I going about studying wrong? What would you recommend I do differently? Should I change my approach? #leetcode #interview #studying #software

TC: 120k

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TOP 8 Comments
  • This is a very long post. Pls cut the topics section where you talk about bsearch linked lists etc. you dont get better at lc by understanding topics. You get better at it by solving q’s. 60 is literally nothing. Dont spend too much time in watching videos. Keep solving qs.
    Sep 11, 2020 0
  • 60 is nothing, of course you keep failing. It’s not easy keep going
    Sep 11, 2020 0
  • Don't rush through topics. Build up an understanding of a topic and filter in LC by that topic and solve 10 problems under that topic and move on to the next one. Try to work on related topics together: For eg trees and linked lists, stacks and queues etc. Array problems may be hard because there are so many variants of them. Practice will help here. Try out this for a list of practice problems for each topic
    https://yangshun.github.io/tech-interview-handbook/best-practice-questions
    Sep 11, 2020 0
  • Sling / Eng
    moosehead

    Go to company page Sling Eng

    moosehead
    Try to be brutally honest about what you understand vs don’t. Don’t stop working on easy problems until you improve. Otherwise you’ll get burnt out for trying harder problems without understanding the fundamentals. Ideally the problems you work on are hard enough to where you are learning, yet easy enough to solve.
    Sep 11, 2020 0
  • It requires some IQ or logical thinking, if coding is not your forte or interest, it is hard no matter how much effort u put in, that why some people got high TC but not all
    Sep 11, 2020 0