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It’s somewhat unhelpful to lump all the questions that leetcode asks in one bucket. I’ve been coding for 25 years and have never once needed to apply any dynami

It’s somewhat unhelpful to lump all the questions that leetcode asks in one bucket. I’ve been coding for 25 years and have never once needed to apply any dynamic programming methods. But I did some leetcode prep recently when looking for a new job and reviewing some of the tree and graph algorithms wasn’t totally useless because those things do come up from time to time in regular dev work.

lfowles 5y ago
That's fair, but you also don't usually get the luxury of telling the interviewer that you only studied the tree and graph problems so you won't be doing any dynamic programming questions they happen to ask.
fault1 5y ago
Have you ever done much optimization or worked on solvers? DP tends to come up often in that type of work.
62951413 5y ago
I'm with you on this. I don't remember much of algo questions before 2010 outside of actual GOOG. If anything, OOP design like "for a game of chess" were common in LNKD-like companies. And j.u.c-like real life knowledge. I remember being asked to implement quick sort or reverse a list in 2010 or so. Then to do DFS on a graph or detect all connected subareas of a matrix in 2015. DP questions were so new I din't know what they were back then. I had interviews last year with two out of three rounds being DP puzzles. I don't know about junior engineers but I want to go outside at least on weekends and not think much about computers. So the hours I have for "studying" can be spent either on learning something new and useful (Flink? ML? golang generics?) or memorizing this mindless leetcoding. I've done development for too long to have any interest in algo trivia or problems not based in real life situations.
- fault1 5y ago
  I would say going further back in time, for example, MSFT during the early 2000s, the interviews were far worse, it was "fermi" types of questions (e.g, https://www.innovativeteachingideas.com/blog/an-excellent-collection-of-fermi-problems-for-your-class https://www.innovativeteachingideas.com/blog/an-excellent-co...) Often the same thing in for example, typical wall street firms before 2008.

lfowles 5y ago

That's fair, but you also don't usually get the luxury of telling the interviewer that you only studied the tree and graph problems so you won't be doing any dynamic programming questions they happen to ask.

fault1 5y ago

Have you ever done much optimization or worked on solvers? DP tends to come up often in that type of work.

62951413 5y ago

I'm with you on this. I don't remember much of algo questions before 2010 outside of actual GOOG. If anything, OOP design like "for a game of chess" were common in LNKD-like companies. And j.u.c-like real life knowledge. I remember being asked to implement quick sort or reverse a list in 2010 or so. Then to do DFS on a graph or detect all connected subareas of a matrix in 2015. DP questions were so new I din't know what they were back then. I had interviews last year with two out of three rounds being DP puzzles. I don't know about junior engineers but I want to go outside at least on weekends and not think much about computers. So the hours I have for "studying" can be spent either on learning something new and useful (Flink? ML? golang generics?) or memorizing this mindless leetcoding. I've done development for too long to have any interest in algo trivia or problems not based in real life situations.

fault1 5y ago
I would say going further back in time, for example, MSFT during the early 2000s, the interviews were far worse, it was "fermi" types of questions (e.g, https://www.innovativeteachingideas.com/blog/an-excellent-collection-of-fermi-problems-for-your-class https://www.innovativeteachingideas.com/blog/an-excellent-co...) Often the same thing in for example, typical wall street firms before 2008.