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I think Leetcoding is a worthy investment for career. Why not . I understand that it feels like its waste of time with no practical use but the upsides are tha

I think Leetcoding is a worthy investment for career. Why not . I understand that it feels like its waste of time with no practical use but the upsides are that they make job hopping trival because you know what to expect and feel confident. I think its a tiny investment for big returns. unparalleled to any other activity you could invest your time in.

scarface74 4y ago
Even though I had other means to get into BigTech and still stay hands on technical, if I didn’t, I definitely would have spent 3 months “grinding leetCode” to get a six figure increase. I’m lying, I would have hated working for any large tech company as a software developer after spending decades at small companies.
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
> unparalleled to any other activity you could invest your time in. Huh. Never heard that before. I invest my time in writing "shippable" code. Even my "farting around" projects are done in a manner as if they were to be released by a Fortune 50 company. That means that Every. Single. Line. Of. Code. that I write is "ship" code. There are a number of projects that I've stopped working on (I archive them, but leave them out there), and a few that were never really meant to be sent out to fend for themselves, but I still make the effort to write tests and documentation for them. I'm so used to delivering software, that I've almost forgotten what it was like to play around; which is actually a bit of a shame. It could easily be said that I "take things too seriously." I can tell you that my employers liked it, though. My GH Activity Graph is solid green, and I wouldn't dream of "gaming" it. I don't especially care whether or not anyone thinks I'm "l33t." I'm an old fart that has no intention of working for anyone, ever again. I write code for myself, and that I want to see. Most of the folks that I care what they think of me, have no understanding of my tech work, and that's fine. It makes me feel good to make good, well-tested, well-documented, well-architected code that solves problems. I guess you could call me a "completionist." I like to finish stuff.
- shakezula 4y ago
  I have to agree with parent comment. Leet code interviews, while sometimes obnoxious, are still good exercises. I have learned a lot of nuanced takes from a leet code interview with an interesting question.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
    OK, fair 'nuff. Right now, I'm working on a data parser for a backend API that fetches a JSON response, using the built-in NSURLSession stuff, turns it into a Swift Dictionary, then I sort through that Dictionary, and emit a bunch of Swift struct instances for use by the API consumer. The reason for this, is because the API that I wrote about seven years ago, is giving us performance problems. I wrote about that in this comment[0]. The NSURL stuff has all the sockets and whatnot, as well as all the transport stuff. I've written that stuff before, but I guarantee that the deep geeks that wrote the system have done a far better job of optimizing that stuff, than I ever will. The JSON parser (built into the OS, but I may think about maybe licensing another one, if this doesn't do what I want) has all the recursive-descent, tree-crawling stuff in it, so I don't need to worry about that. Since this is a multi-threaded system, almost every school algorithm is worthless, but I guarantee that the deep geeks that wrote the system have done a far better job of optimizing that stuff, than I ever will. I want to get the hell out of this API, as soon as possible, and return to writing the UI stuff that will make my app sing. The API is being developed as a standalone SPM package that will work on all the Apple systems (iOS, iPadOS, MacOS, WatchOS, and TVOS). The one that it's replacing only worked on iOS. No excuse. I know better, now. I'll also be structuring this to be a lot "swiftier," and more "reactive" than the original API. The app is a native Swift UIKit app. It's a big mofo. At its peak, it was over 40 screens, but I'm trying to get it down to half that. I've been working on it for a couple of years. It's had a couple of pretty massive pivots, in that time. UIKit is a big framework. It takes years to learn. I'm looking forward to SwiftUI, but SwiftUI is not at the point, where I'm comfortable committing to a project of this scope. I've been working with UIKit since 2012. I barely understand it, and they keep adding new stuff, as fast as I can learn it. Swift is an excellent language. Like every language, you can get the basics down in a few weeks, but it takes years to get the advanced stuff down. I've been working with Swift since 2014 (the day it was announced). I speak it without an accent. The project I'm working on has been a wonderful masterclass in Apple iOS development. I also wrote a fairly massive PHP backend, but that was years ago, and it is, I guarantee, not as cool as a really good PHPista could do. That said, it works great, is maintainable, secure as hell, and fairly well-structured for scaling and extension. The app is gonna be great. Its approaching ship (still a ways off, but we can see the harbor lights, from here). I've been releasing it on TestFlight since it was a month old. By now, I've probably made over 800 TestFlight releases to the team. That's how come we can be so confident in the UI and the Quality. It gets banged on a lot. But maybe I'm doing it all wrong, and I should stop working on this to practice leetcode. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32921823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32921823
weatherlite 4y ago
Totally agree with this, although I do see some more alternative methods used by non FAANGS (e.g with f5 it felt like they actually tried to determine my actual knowledge as a SWE). But solving a few Leetcodes every now and then (even outside of interviewing season) is probably a very profitable habit.

scarface74 4y ago

Even though I had other means to get into BigTech and still stay hands on technical, if I didn’t, I definitely would have spent 3 months “grinding leetCode” to get a six figure increase. I’m lying, I would have hated working for any large tech company as a software developer after spending decades at small companies.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

> unparalleled to any other activity you could invest your time in. Huh. Never heard that before. I invest my time in writing "shippable" code. Even my "farting around" projects are done in a manner as if they were to be released by a Fortune 50 company. That means that Every. Single. Line. Of. Code. that I write is "ship" code. There are a number of projects that I've stopped working on (I archive them, but leave them out there), and a few that were never really meant to be sent out to fend for themselves, but I still make the effort to write tests and documentation for them. I'm so used to delivering software, that I've almost forgotten what it was like to play around; which is actually a bit of a shame. It could easily be said that I "take things too seriously." I can tell you that my employers liked it, though. My GH Activity Graph is solid green, and I wouldn't dream of "gaming" it. I don't especially care whether or not anyone thinks I'm "l33t." I'm an old fart that has no intention of working for anyone, ever again. I write code for myself, and that I want to see. Most of the folks that I care what they think of me, have no understanding of my tech work, and that's fine. It makes me feel good to make good, well-tested, well-documented, well-architected code that solves problems. I guess you could call me a "completionist." I like to finish stuff.

shakezula 4y ago
I have to agree with parent comment. Leet code interviews, while sometimes obnoxious, are still good exercises. I have learned a lot of nuanced takes from a leet code interview with an interesting question.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  OK, fair 'nuff. Right now, I'm working on a data parser for a backend API that fetches a JSON response, using the built-in NSURLSession stuff, turns it into a Swift Dictionary, then I sort through that Dictionary, and emit a bunch of Swift struct instances for use by the API consumer. The reason for this, is because the API that I wrote about seven years ago, is giving us performance problems. I wrote about that in this comment[0]. The NSURL stuff has all the sockets and whatnot, as well as all the transport stuff. I've written that stuff before, but I guarantee that the deep geeks that wrote the system have done a far better job of optimizing that stuff, than I ever will. The JSON parser (built into the OS, but I may think about maybe licensing another one, if this doesn't do what I want) has all the recursive-descent, tree-crawling stuff in it, so I don't need to worry about that. Since this is a multi-threaded system, almost every school algorithm is worthless, but I guarantee that the deep geeks that wrote the system have done a far better job of optimizing that stuff, than I ever will. I want to get the hell out of this API, as soon as possible, and return to writing the UI stuff that will make my app sing. The API is being developed as a standalone SPM package that will work on all the Apple systems (iOS, iPadOS, MacOS, WatchOS, and TVOS). The one that it's replacing only worked on iOS. No excuse. I know better, now. I'll also be structuring this to be a lot "swiftier," and more "reactive" than the original API. The app is a native Swift UIKit app. It's a big mofo. At its peak, it was over 40 screens, but I'm trying to get it down to half that. I've been working on it for a couple of years. It's had a couple of pretty massive pivots, in that time. UIKit is a big framework. It takes years to learn. I'm looking forward to SwiftUI, but SwiftUI is not at the point, where I'm comfortable committing to a project of this scope. I've been working with UIKit since 2012. I barely understand it, and they keep adding new stuff, as fast as I can learn it. Swift is an excellent language. Like every language, you can get the basics down in a few weeks, but it takes years to get the advanced stuff down. I've been working with Swift since 2014 (the day it was announced). I speak it without an accent. The project I'm working on has been a wonderful masterclass in Apple iOS development. I also wrote a fairly massive PHP backend, but that was years ago, and it is, I guarantee, not as cool as a really good PHPista could do. That said, it works great, is maintainable, secure as hell, and fairly well-structured for scaling and extension. The app is gonna be great. Its approaching ship (still a ways off, but we can see the harbor lights, from here). I've been releasing it on TestFlight since it was a month old. By now, I've probably made over 800 TestFlight releases to the team. That's how come we can be so confident in the UI and the Quality. It gets banged on a lot. But maybe I'm doing it all wrong, and I should stop working on this to practice leetcode. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32921823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32921823

weatherlite 4y ago

Totally agree with this, although I do see some more alternative methods used by non FAANGS (e.g with f5 it felt like they actually tried to determine my actual knowledge as a SWE). But solving a few Leetcodes every now and then (even outside of interviewing season) is probably a very profitable habit.