Continuous Efforts To Make Free Coding Interview Resources
From LeetCode Mappings To TechInterviewHandbook
My first and only contribution to FreeCodeCamp was this, a consolidated list of free coding interview resources — the editor changed the title, which I thought was unfortunate, but a really good thing to come out of it was that I received an email from Yangshun Tay.
Yangshun Tay created something called blind75.
https://leetcode.com/discuss/general-discussion/460599/blind-75-leetcode-questions
His email was about a new thing he made called Grind75. He really wanted everyone to know about it.
The basic idea is that everyone who interviews for software engineer positions has to grind LeetCode. That’s not…completely true…but I have found it to be true in the majority of cases. Anecdotally it doesn’t apply to government positions, it doesn’t always apply to the defense industry, and every now and then I find a company that does something really interesting in its interview. The majority of the time, however, LeetCode really is a necessary evil.
The basic premise of Blind75 is that unless you are some kind of coding god, you will not have time to grind 5000 LeetCode questions. What you do instead is solve problems that follow patterns, so that when you go through a real interview you can recognize the same coding pattern.
Arslan Ahmad
Arslan Ahmad, co-founder of Design Gurus (which you may recognize from Grokking The System Design Interview), created something called InterviewNoodle.
We have interacted very, very briefly. I contributed to it a couple of times, but I don’t really recommend it today. I think the articles by Ahmad himself are extremely useful, but now the website is flooded by a lot of content that is:
- Paywall-blocked
- Not even remotely related to programming interviews
- Both
Here are a couple really good, paywall-free articles:
Someone mapped his coding patterns to LeetCode questions, for anyone who does not want to pay for the Grokking course.
https://leetcode.com/discuss/career/448285/list-of-questions-sorted-by-common-patterns
I can vouch for both Blind75 and Ahmad’s lists. They are relevant and I have seen these come up in real interviews. But I would be lying if I said I personally worked through each question myself.
I have purchased both Grokking courses, but I will not recommend them to anyone until I finish them.
Closing Thoughts
Interview and LeetCode preparation is…a lot. I don’t even know if they’re going to be doing this for the foreseeable future.
I can still remember a time when computer science was THE major, and coding bootcamps were incredibly popular. Maybe I am living under a rock and this is still the case, but for me it seems like the mood has changed. Some people (note to self: Citation needed) have even said that this is a good thing. Instead of over-romanticizing software engineering as a dream job where everyone makes 300K a year and gets surrounded by free food and kombucha, we can just treat it like it is — a profession where you come into work, produce software, get paid, and then go home.
To this day, there are still a LOT of people making money off of coding interview resources. There is nothing wrong with it — Cracking The Coding Interview is probably the most popular book on the subject, and it is not free. But if these resources are targeted at people who have just graduated college, just gotten laid off, or are trying to break into the industry…then wouldn’t it be best to show them resources that are free?
