Just started preparing for coding interviews. Decided to start with ctci since it's been 10 years since graduation. What's the best way to get through ctci quickly? I.e are there any chapters to ignore? Do problems from the book or just read the theory and jump to leetcode? Author herself says not to ask questions from her book.
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CTCI is good beginners book, but if you really want to learn from a book use EPI. My suggestion would be CS Fundamentals ->CTCI -> EPI -> Leetcode.
+1 on EPI (elements of programming interviews). I have personally read and used both, and felt CTCI was much less helpful.
I’m currently going through @TOPS3 steps. Might take me a year to complete as I can only get through a chapter a week. I am doing all CTCI questions (starting the queues and stack questions now) as they do map to actual LC problems. I will not use an IDE later for the real thing. Hopefully by the time I get to EPI I’ll be much faster answering questions. I can only do 1-2 hours per day so some days I feel like I’m going at a snail’s pace. It’s a marathon and not a sprint so that keeps me focused (don’t want to have to do this process again).
This is how I'm preparing. 1. Learn Data Structures first. All of them important one atleast. 2. Try solving easy level question with those data structures so that you feel confident. Eg : If you are studying LinkedList, learn how to reverse it and all. 3. Move on Algorithms part. Eg . Learn famous algos like DFS, BFS, Recursion DP and all. 4. Start LeetCode grinding. You can shuffle these in between. Material : LC, AlgoExpert, GFG, other blogs just google,YouTube lots of good playlist on specific topics, shuffle pages of CtCI in between your preparation.
Can you share some playlists?
This is a good tip. For me , unfortunately reading and then jumping to LC was not a success. Instead I jumped directly into the say top 100 LC and everytime i saw a new concept, i read about that online in details. That way you will learn to identify questions with patterns . This worked for me. May not work for everyone else. I prefer learning via examples and not learning by reading books.
I didn't find either ctci or epi very helpful. 1. Buy good book on algorithm design and data structures. You need to have good understanding of the theory + online course (khan academy is good) 2. Solve problems on leetcode or hackerrank. Whether your are able to solve the problem or not always lookup discussion section.
ctci epi are crap, I wonder why faangers recommend them .
CTCI will not be enough even for new grad job, I can recite the book back and forth and yet I could not crack the coding interview, be able to solve 2 hard questions in 45 mins is the norm now with current level of competition
This is the wrong approach to interviews. Its like saying that you're gonna memorize a bunch of things for an exam, and hope that is exactly what comes out. It might, and then you get lucky and do well. But chances are it won't be quite like that for interviews, especially at Google, where just knowing the answer is not enough and explaining the approach, tradeoffs etc are also expected. Also Google doesn't really ask questions straight from LC or CTCI so keep that in mind as well.
yeah but the patterns are the same. the google doesnt ask straight from LC meme here needs to stop
Of course patterns are the same. If someone is capable of memorizing patterns in a short time and using them in different variations of a problem, then good for them. But I'm not sure how someone can memorize a few DP problems and be able to solve any DP under the sun
ctci is outdated and it's difficult to ace coding interview in top tech companies with ctci. My suggestion is to read theory from a good book (and watch videos on youtube) and then jump to leetcode.
Any book that you recommend?