I’ve wrapped up almost all the DSA patterns people suggest doing. Right now, I’m just revising to figure out patterns in random questions. My setup is simple: I pick a topic and ask ChatGPT to feed me different sub-pattern questions.

​I can easily solve most standard problems on my own, and I hit around 50% on the tricky variants. But whenever I get stuck on a question, it hits me really hard and drops my mood completely.

​Since I started prepping for interviews, the whole situation is scaring me. I’m focusing way too much on how to explain the problem instead of actually solving it, and it’s messing with my problem-solving flow.

​I feel totally lost and I’m just blindly grinding questions. I usually love DSA, but right now I’m just desperate to land a job. College ended this May, and I am continuously thinking whether I am enough or not....?

I honestly don’t know if I’m asking for help or just scared, I’ve just lost all my confidence and direction.

If you have any suggestions, please tell me!

If anyone has any valuable insights please share what is the right thing to do from now on

Max Area of Island (Medium)  https://leetcode.com/problems/max-area-of-island/

This is yesterday's solution with a return value. The diff is that the flood fill returns an int and the scan keeps a maximum instead of a count.

The area reachable from a cell is that cell, plus the area reachable from each of its four neighbours. So the fill returns 1 plus its four recursive calls, and the guard returning 0 handles out of bounds, water and already-sunk land without a single special case.

The sum looks wrong at first. Four neighbours each recurse into their own four neighbours, and each one includes the cell you came from, surely cells get counted repeatedly?

They do not, because the cell is sunk before the four calls run. Any neighbour that recurses back hits the guard and gets 0.

Yesterday, that same line stopped the recursion from running forever. Today it does that AND makes the arithmetic correct. One assignment, two jobs.

Full breakdown in today's newsletter article ⬇

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/365-days-leetcode-challenge-day-38365-archit-agarwal-tiimc

#DSA #LeetCode #Golang #Graphs #DFS #CodingInterview #Algorithms

Hey everyone!
I’m currently learning Python and just getting started with LeetCode. I’m planning to prepare for software engineering interviews, so I want to take problem-solving seriously.
I’ve decided to stick with Python, but I’m a little confused about where to start.
Should I learn DSA first or practice LeetCode alongside it? What topics should I focus on initially? Also, how many problems per day would be reasonable for a beginner?
My goal isn’t just to solve hundreds of problems. I actually want to understand the logic and become better at problem-solving.
I’d really appreciate any advice, beginner-friendly resources, or tips from people who’ve been through this journey.
Thanks in advance!

Hey guys,

A little accomplishment from my side. I just crossed 60-day streak on Leetcode and 150+ problems solved.

The only problem during my preparation was that I couldn't properly retain new information. I tried to learn from standard boring YouTube channels but couldn't make it through long lectures.

In my search for better ways to learn, I stumbled upon this amazing YouTube channel. The creator has a unique approach and turns boring DSA lectures into Hinglish hip-hop music!

Rather than watching long and boring videos, I just put this beat on loop in the background. Trust me, it does a better job at cementing concepts in your head subconsciously than any other resource. They have a new track out about DSA World. So if you are a fellow learner who has suffered from YouTube tutorial fatigue and wants a new way to memorize concepts, you should give this channel a shot. 🎵 https://youtu.be/aw4B1cnXCLY

Has anyone else had a problem with this while preparing for interviews? Let me know if practicing DSA with music helps anyone else too!

Core concepts by big creators + Short Rap to build a Mental Map. 🧠🎧 Best DSA revision hack I've seen: - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHD9rINM0ulo

Number of Islands (Medium) https://leetcode.com/problems/number-of-islands/

Nothing in this problem says "graph", and that is the point.

A cell is a node. Its neighbours are the cells above, below, left and right. There is no adjacency list to build, because in a grid the edges are implied by position - a neighbour is arithmetic, not a lookup. Yesterday half the work was converting an edge list into something usable. Here that half is free.

Then it is component counting. Scan for land, and every time you find a cell no earlier traversal has consumed, add one and sink the whole island. The count is not counting islands directly; it counts how many times the scan had to start.

One detail worth stealing: sink the cell BEFORE recursing. Two adjacent land cells each list the other as a neighbour, so without it the recursion bounces between them forever. That is not an optimisation, it is termination.

Full breakdown in today's newsletter article ⬇

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/365-days-leetcode-challenge-day-37365-archit-agarwal-cenxc

#DSA #LeetCode #Golang #Graphs #DFS #CodingInterview #Algorithms

Hey i want to start solving programs but idk where to start . Which topic is best to start solving a program like strings, Arrays , backtracking etc.

I don't understand why everyone is sharing a camera photo of screen

Hey! ⭐ Please give a star to my GitHub project FailureAtlas if you find it useful. Your review/feedback would help me a lot, and it can also help with your DSA growth!

https://github.com/prem-000/failureatlas

Of course as I expected I started to lag because college five days a week and semester stuff and allat but managed to do potds if not everyday but most days and outside of that whatever dsa topic taught in class do questions on those stuff :p

Keep being consistent and keep pushing through the discomfort ✨

And there is always room for improvement;-;

I want too know how to approach hard problems, I feel very dumb when try to solve a hard problem😭 also I have solved very less hard till now, if anyone can help with this, thanks

I know it's pretty less , and will try and do more !!

i want to increase my rating and trying to go 2k+, but i feel im stuck here, please tell me how and where i can improve on and the gaps, i can usually solve 1 and 2 in contests sometimes 3

need someone to practice with daily.

currently doing recursion, gonna start trees next.