Recruiting season is coming up in a matter of months now and so I’m looking into shoring up my tech interview skills and some of my more basic data structures and algorithms skills. It’s been a semester since I took Data Structures and Algorithms so I’m really looking forward to it, that course was really fun to get into.
At the recommendation of a good friend of mine, I’m going through the Blind 75 on leetcode. My goal is to get through all of the questions by the end of the semester and more than that, I want to be able to solve all the problems without any help. I want to be able to take the skills and the types of problems I see and be able to map my growing skillset onto the problem. I think that’s going to be the difference between me having done all of these leetcode problems vs really getting a good understanding of these interview questions.
I’m also going to be using C++ for these leetcode problems, I’ve just been really taking a liking to C++ as of late.
So far as I’ve gone through a few problems, I’m enjoying it. What I’ve realized is the incredibly power of hashmaps. I feel as if there is a process in my brain when it comes to looking at these problems. I’m trying to fit the problem into a pattern of heap, a binary tree, a hashmap, etc. and I love it every time I realize I can solve a problem with a hashmap.
There was one problem at the beginning that I couldn’t solve, but I looked into the solution and realized you could solve it with a hashmap. And then the solution was so obvious and now I feel like I’ve gotten this new skill of being able to actually apply hashmaps to different problems.
Anyhow, I’ll talk more about progress on leetcode in the future. Should hopefully learn a lot in this process.