I love Advent of Code. As I sit here trying to prepare for my next set of 'leet' interviews, I wish employers could switch over to this style of tech questions. Advent of Code requires good coding and problem solving skills. Leet coding requires you to memorize every operation for dozens of data structures like how to insert elements in a min heap.
( Insert elements at the end and swap with the parent until the tree is correctly ordered again. Good luck figuring this out in 20 minutes if you don't know it ahead of time. )
( Now prepare yourself to remember how to insert/delete/search for elements in every other data structure with any number of different qualifiers when it's not going to be obvious at the outset of the question what kind of data structure to use )
( Oh and make sure you've memorized the time and space complexity )
I'm there with you 100%. I just took a break after 6 years of consecutive employment. Apparently I did well at my job - remained an IC, but was given more recognition via titles and more and more cross-org design meetings. But now after 6 years of solving hard big scale problems, I've got to come back to how to interview for companies again. Incredible waste of time spending days studying leetcode, interviewing for companies I'd likely not work for just to practice skills I haven't needed in 6 years.
> Leet coding requires you to memorize every operation for dozens of data structures like how to insert elements in a min heap.
I’ve done dozens of leetcode contests (4 problems every Saturday) and never had to use knowledge of the implementation of a min-heap (though I did “import heapq” a few times) to solve any of the problems.
Are you using “leet coding” to refer to technical interviews that simply ask you to implement textbook data structures (somewhat boring imo), as opposed to solving leetcode problems?
You are right, I'm referring to leet code as something every job hunter needs to solve if all the books, websites, and online courses are to be believed. min-heaps usually show up on the List Of Data Structures To Understand.
Probably no one ever asks about them but it's a crapshoot.
( Insert elements at the end and swap with the parent until the tree is correctly ordered again. Good luck figuring this out in 20 minutes if you don't know it ahead of time. )
( Now prepare yourself to remember how to insert/delete/search for elements in every other data structure with any number of different qualifiers when it's not going to be obvious at the outset of the question what kind of data structure to use )
( Oh and make sure you've memorized the time and space complexity )
( Not that I'm bitter or anything )