Are books still useful for coding interview preparation?

How can I utilize the Cracking the Coding Interview book effectively? (answer)

I’m doing most of my writing on Quora this year. For more information, see A Project for 2020.

This week, some armchair psychology:

Why do people cheat in competitive programming? (answer)

I’m doing most of my writing on Quora this year. For more information, see A Project for 2020.

Programming interviews sometimes include problems that don’t require coding, but use some of the same skills as programming puzzles:

What’s the best approach to answer the Google interview question, “how many golf balls can fit inside a school bus”? (answer)

I’m doing most of my writing on Quora this year. For more information, see A Project for 2020.

I have the perfect coding interview process.

Are coding interviews flawed? (answer)

I’m doing most of my writing on Quora this year. For more information, see A Project for 2020.

Quora questions are often about specific people. Here’s one about top competitive programmer Errichto, who is releasing a YouTube video every day in April:

How long does it take to get as good in competitive programming as Errichto? (answer)

I’m doing most of my writing on Quora this year. For more information, see A Project for 2020.

Many people think it is (especially on Stack Overflow), but they don’t always make a good argument for their position:

Is it true that competitive programming is a waste of time? (answer)

I’m doing most of my writing on Quora this year. For more information, see A Project for 2020.

This question is similar to some I’ve covered before, but I like how it’s worded:

How long does it take to finish a problem you don’t know how to solve? (answer)

I’m doing most of my writing on Quora this year. For more information, see A Project for 2020.

I’ve spent time on both HackerRank and LeetCode this year, and they’re both useful. But I can see why LeetCode is the one that comes to mind when people think about coding interview preparation.

What is the difference between HackerRank and LeetCode? (answer)

I’m doing most of my writing on Quora this year. For more information, see A Project for 2020.

There’s a concept in psychology called the forgetting curve. It describes how, once you learn something, you gradually forget it if you don’t actively review. Learning to solve coding interview questions is no exception:

Even if I solve 200 algorithm questions on LeetCode and think that I understood solutions, after 2 months without solving any question, when I try to solve them again I can’t remember some of the solutions. What should I do to literally learn them? (answer)

I’m doing most of my writing on Quora this year. For more information, see A Project for 2020.

LeetCode classifies each of its problems as Easy, Medium, or Hard. This leads to discussions among users about how many of which types of problems to practice. Since even easy problems appear in interviews, it’s important to have a strategy for problems at all difficulty levels:

I can solve some of the medium problems that I attend to, in LeetCode and can never solve the hard ones. Do I have to study more to ace the Google interview until I can solve the hard ones or do I have a chance currently? (answer)

I’m doing most of my writing on Quora this year. For more information, see A Project for 2020.