Achilles Heel of Coding Test Failures — Update 4–After Solving 20 (Easy) LeetCode Problems

So, I have begun my journey. Solved about 20 (Easy) level coding problems on LeetCode. All code solutions, updated on my GitHub as usual.

This is a sequel to my previous post.

Achilles Heel of Coding Test Failures — And an Attempt to Heal It (Pun!)

Right then. As mentioned in my previous post, without thinking twice, I paid for the expensive annual subscription. These things are billed in dollars and unlike, say Apple India, don’t have any parity pricing for their digital services.

I am paying like American with American dollars, baby! Yeah!

Anyway, For the first few minutes, I simply spent some time, figuring out the website and its many systems. For one thing, so many of the site features are locked behind the premium wall. Sure, I have the premium plan, but I cannot imagine the frustration of people trying to get things done without the premium plan.

I suppose, this is a consequence of being old. For example, I am also paying for YouTube Premium, because I simply cannot stand the endless ads. So, I think, the premium wall thing is more, my problem, rather than, a problem with the leetcode website.

I like the layout. very similar to the layout used in GitHub and Stack Overflow. i suppose it’s an industry standard, these things. I don’t have any badges. I have signed up for some contests, which should hopefully help me gain some badges. There is a contest coming up this week, and I will be participating no matter how badly I perform.

That is one of those good things about me. No matter how many times I am shot down, I keep getting back up. Just staunchly adamant and persistent by nature.

Now, on the top left corner, there is a rank thing. I am not sure how that works. I am not able to find out, who is ‘Rank 1’. But, I do see that, I am currently ranked 2.1 million (out of roughly 5 million registered accounts) on the website.

Here is how my rank improved, an extract from my learning diary and my leetcode profile.

1. LeetCode Rank on March 12th 2,148,685
2. LeetCode Rank on March 11th 2,669,404
3. LeetCode Rank on March 10th 2,855,776
4. LeetCode Rank on March 9th 5,000,000

So, that’s how it happened. I will only begin competing with the real active coders after a few months because right now, I am probably just waddling past dead and inactive accounts. As always, just like with all other things in life, here also in Leetcode, the game is a pursuit of patience.

That’s okay. along with my stubbornness, my patience is another one of my good things. We will wait.

Next thing that got me cooking and happy, is the ‘explore’ section. This was an unexpected surprise. Probably because, I am new to these ‘coding test’ websites. In the explore section, I found ‘learning guides’ similar to the learn sites that are maintained by Microsoft for all their dot net concepts.

This is a good thing for me because, my foundational knowledge of programming is strong in some things, but extremely weak in everything else. I am like that ’20% does 80% work’ tool in the spanner belt. So, I have already started knocking my way through all these ‘explore’ chapters.

The nice thing is, along with these programming concepts, the chapters are blended with coding problems. So, I am learning things like in a classroom, but, I am also solving LeetCode problems, which is the primary purpose I came to this website anyway.

And, that is the story so far. I have added the solutions for the leetcode stuff that I have done so far. Of course, the solutions are available to view on my leetcode profile as well.

anyway, here is the github link.

Leet Code Practice and Solutions

I am hopeful, a year later, I would have some 100 or 200 solved problems, and still actively maintaining this (like I do with this blog or my GitHub or my podcast and so on).

And, that is all there is to it.

Note: this is a repost of my original post on medium.