Seems like a good idea, is it the same kind of concept as the woodpecker method in chess ?

That's certainly a (to me) very unusual way to learn programming.

...the f?! why are we interviewing ppl for things like this?!

you either:

(a) want DEEP understanding of math and proofs behind algorithms etc.

(b) can get away with very high level understanding, and refer to documentation and/or use LLMs for implementation details help

there is no real world use case for a middle-ground (c) where you want someone with algo implementation details rote-memorized in their brain and without the very deep understanding that would make the rote-memorization unnecessary!

The idea of getting quizzed on how good you are at recalling specific patterns in algorithm construction is completely and utterly bizarre.

I get that some people feel forced into it, but nobody can believe that this is an appropriate measure to judge programmers on. Sure, being able to understand and implement algorithms is important, but this is not what this is training for.

I learned the other day (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46184676) that people who aren't students apparently use LeetCode too, for recreational purposes? I'm not sure why you'd work on someone else's imaginary problem instead of doing something for yourself, so apparently it's there and some people enjoy it, regardless of my understanding of it.

But then I don't know how to reconcile the idea that some people use LeetCode to pass interviews, some use it recreationally, but then this app seems to indicate some people use LeetCode to learn patterns to implement in the real world, which seems absolutely backwards to me. These are tiny examples, not "real programming" like you'd encounter in the world outside of computers, LeetCode can impossibly teach you how to create useful programs, it only teaches you syntax and specific problems.

So I guess take this as a word of caution, that no matter how much you grind LeetCode, nothing will prepare you to solve real world problems as practicing solving real world problems, and you don't need any platforms for that, just try to make your daily life better and you'll get better at it over time and with experience of making mistakes.

I like the idea, and you've got yourself a customer :)

The lifetime membership + launch discount was a good marketing bait I felt for.

Not really understanding the negativity here. We know for a fact that most of the people that master intellectual problems do so via pattern recognition, not by reasoning.

You show a chess master a position, he/she can instantly tell you what the best moves are without "thinking" or "calculating" because it's mostly pattern recognition.

Maths and algorithms fall in the same category. When approaching new problems, masters don't really start processing the information and reasoning about it, instead they use pattern recognition to find what are very similar problems.