I’m Working Through the NeetCode 150!

Introduction:

This week’s blog post is all about something new I’ve opted to undertake (The NeetCode 150) as well as the reasons behind it.

As always, before we get into this week’s blog post, please make sure to applaud, comment and share with your friends.

Happy Reading!

What is it?

Essentially it’s a set of 150 Data Structure and Algorithms questions covering a wide range of topics (2 pointer, sliding window, greedy algorithms…).

The idea behind it is that these topics/questions are highly likely to come up in technical interviews.

Why I Chose To Undertake It?

The reason behind undertaking these problems is firstly because I want to get better at Data Structures and Algorithms (DSA).

Secondly it provides a structured approach to DSA in the sense that it highlights the key 150 problems. Previously I was using LeetCode to just randomly select questions and attempt to solve them. The issue with this is that there’s clearly a conflict between selecting questions that I can easily solve and pushing myself to the maximum. Also the fact that there’s 3000+ questions makes it difficult to navigate what questions to undertake and there’s definitely a lack of structure.

How I’m Approaching the NeetCode 150:

To make it clear, I am not trying to solve every problem here from memory. The reason for this is that I’m not yet completely competent with all of the different techniques out there to solve these kind of problems.

Personally, I’d say that it’s better to utilise all of the resourses out there (Videos, websites like GeekForGeeks…) to try and gain an understanding of the different techniques out there. That way I can develop a greater approach to problem solving rather than just for these specific problems.

This also means in future I can use tools like AlgoMap to test myself against similar problems but with less support.

Prior Apprehension:

So I have seen this in the past before and admittedly opted against it, just to avoid restricting myself to 150 problems. It’s easy to see things like this online and think that they’re just a trend but I’m currently 40 problems in and I do see the value. There’s even videos that walk through the thought process behind each problem.

Conclusion:

The NeetCode 150 serves as a new challenge for me to cover the core DSA topics and ideally, I’d like to do it as quick as possible.

Final Things:

As always, thank you for taking the time to read this article.

All my links are here.