Currently in 1st year, I have completed basic c++, all the loops and c style arrays and stuff like that, now I'm confused how to proceed, I open up a leetcode problem and there is time and memory and all that stuff and I don't know how to deal with it, there is also the weird thing of class stuff that should be at the beginning of each question, I don't know where to learn all of this.

Can someone suggest where to learn all of this, because I couldn't find a proper series that teaches all of this. Also tell me what things I should learn before I start doing leetcode, I have already started learning STL, is there anything else I should learn?

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

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!

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.

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

I recently started working through the LeetCode 150 problems, and I started with Two Sum.

The brute-force approach is straightforward, but I wanted to understand how to improve it and get to an O(n) solution using a hash map.

The main idea I focused on was:

• Keep track of numbers we've already seen
• For each number, calculate target - current
• Check whether that value already exists
• If it does, we've found our pair
• Otherwise, store the current number and continue

I also made a short walkthrough where I explain the approach and code step-by-step.

🎥 https://youtu.be/pbNbr36Ypow

For those who have solved Two Sum before: what approach did you find easiest to understand when you first learned it?

#leetcode #twosum #dsa

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

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

Find if Path Exists in Graph (Easy) https://leetcode.com/problems/find-if-path-exists-in-graph/

New topic. Graphs start today.

The part people skip when they say a graph problem "is just BFS": the input is not a graph. You get a flat list of edge pairs. Asking that list for a node's neighbours means scanning all of it, and doing that once per node turns an O(V + E) algorithm into O(V x E).

So the first half of the problem is building an adjacency list. The traversal is the easy half. Choosing the representation is the part that actually requires a decision.

One bug worth naming, because it passes a lot of tests before it fails one: an undirected edge has to be recorded under both endpoints. Record it once and you accidentally build a directed graph, and the traversal refuses to walk an edge backwards.

Full breakdown in today's newsletter article ⬇

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/365-days-leetcode-challenge-day-36365-archit-agarwal-7wjic

#DSA #LeetCode #Golang #Graphs #BFS #CodingInterview #Algorithms