Blog post 4


Wow, I can’t believe this is my last blog post for the semester! We’ve made huge progress over the last few weeks. I was able to add some basic layouts for our frontend. And my teammate Satyam has connected some of his backend API with the frontend button. So we have some basic functionalities for our website. Now you’re able to create quizzes and see the created quiz on the dashboard. However, the types of quizzes are still limited, and we also found there are some missing functions for the page. So we’ll take some time to improve our website and make sure it’ll be ready for the next few weeks.

So that was a quick update for our project, I want to keep talking about the topics I mentioned in my last post, which is preparing for an interview. I pointed out 3 things you need to prepare which are 1. Apply early 2. Leetcode 3. Behavior questions(BQ). I want to dive deep into how to prepare Leetcode today because it wasn’t easy for me when I first started.

To prepare for technical skill assessments, Leetcode is the perfect place to go, but when you first visit the website, it’s just overwhelming. There are so many problems to solve. And it’s impossible to solve all the problems on Leetcode, even if you did, you can’t memorize all the solutions. So what you need to do is you need to use your time wisely. And you can’t expect that you will have the exact same problem when interviewing. That means you need to categorize the Leetcode problem and practice each category over and over, there won’t be two exact same problems, but in each category, you can find some similarities, and if you solve a lot of problems, you will start feeling that you are more in control even there are new problems that you have never seen before.

And when you practice each problem, make sure you don’t spend more than 10 mins just looking at the problem. If you don’t have any thoughts on how to solve it, just click on the solution or find videos on Youtube or the discussion forum. Try to read others’ solutions. Being able to read others’ solutions is an important skill. Next, write the code without looking at the solution code. You can use the logic from others’ solutions, but make sure you’re writing the code by yourself. Finally, when your answer is approved, explain the logic behind the code to your friends or just record it. This is the most important step and it’s what most people are struggling with. Being able to explain your code and make it understandable to others might be the most important skill if you want to be a good Software developer. Also, if you can’t explain your code very well, that means maybe you don’t understand it fully yet.

So, with the above suggestions, practice those 3 steps over and over in each Leetcode category such as Array, BFS, DFS, Linklist…You will see big improvements, but it won’t be easy. It needs determination and persistence. However, if you stick to it, I’m sure you will one day be well prepared and find your dream job!

Thank you for reading! See ya!

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