Nice comparison. It is pretty similar in spirit to the woodpecker method.

In chess you repeat the same positions until the patterns feel automatic. Here it is LeetCode problems. You keep seeing the same core patterns and rebuild the solution step by step. For each step and line there is a small objective first, and then a short first principles explanation after you answer, so you are not just memorizing code but training pattern recognition and understanding at the same time.

It’s not about learning programming, more about learning how to solve leet code problems quickly as I understand it

People are sheep. Someone somewhere used mathematical puzzles as interview questions. That someone became big. Others assumed it was because their interview process was amazing and followed blindly. Soon enough the process started to be gamed.

I'm seeing this trend again in the field of AI where math olympiad participants are being given God like status by a few companies and the media.

Truth is even the most prolific computational scientists will flunk these idiotic interviews.

Maybe it's just me, but I want people that are reasonably competent and you can work with. Maybe there are some jobs that require deep understanding of maths/proofs etc, but those are what, maybe 1 in 100 engineering jobs?

More often than not a deep interest in a particular technical domain is a liability. It's like that guy that insists on functional programming design patterns that insists on a fold with tail recursion where simple mutation could have easily sufficed. Or endless optimization, abstraction and forced patterns. Bro, you're working on building a crud app, we don't need spacecraft design.

> why are we interviewing ppl for things like this?!

Ship has definitely sailed

> 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!

I was watching a video recently talking about how Facebook is adding KPIs for its engineers' LLM usage. As in, you will be marked negatively in your performance review if your code is good but you didn't use AI enough.

I think, you and I agree, that's obviously stupid right? I imagined myself as an engineer at Facebook, reading this email come through. I can imagine two paths: I roll my eyes, find a way to auto-prompt an LLM to fulfill my KPI needs, and go back to working with my small working group of "underrecognized folks that are doing actual work that keeps the company's products functioning against all odds." Or, the other path: I put on my happy company stooge hat, install 25 VScode LLM forks, start writing a ton of internal and external posts about how awesome AI is and how much more productive I am with it, and get almost 0 actual work done but score the highest on the AI KPIs.

In the second path, I believe I will be more capitalistically rewarded (promotions, cushy middle/upper management job where I don't have to do any actual work). In the first, I believe I will be more fulfilled.

Now consider the modern interview: the market is flooded with engineers after the AI layoffs. There's a good set of startups out there that will appreciate an excellent, pragmatic engineer with a solid portfolio, but there's the majority of other gigs, for which I need to pass a leetcode interview, and nothing else really matters.

If I can't get into one of the good startups, then, I guess I'm going to put on my dipshit spinny helicopter hat and play the stupid clown game with all the managers so I can have money.

I mostly agree that the interview format itself is strange. I do not think people should be judged mainly on how many patterns they can recall on command.

The reality for a lot of candidates is that they still face rounds that look exactly like that, and they stress out even when they understand the ideas. I built this for that group, where the bottleneck is turning a pattern they already know into code under a clock. Each step in the drills is tied to a first principles explanation, so the focus is on the reasoning behind the pattern, not trivia.

It's just a power move on devs. People come on HN to brag about crazy high comp and how devs are untouchable. The reality is that if you feel the need to do circus tricks for someone in exchange for a role that makes you happy, you got no leverage. While this might have been less obvious during the late 10s and early 20s with all the fancy pods, consoles, free high quality fresh meals and what not that Big Tech used to offer to devs, it is certainly harder to deny nowadays.

> imaginary problem instead of doing something for yourself

they're doing it for themselves just like when they solve sudokus, crosswords or play fortnite

some people like to play with Rubiks Cubes, which among other things is a nice tactile way to learn some interesting advanced math

I do codeforces in my spare time. Sometimes I implement and ML paper. Other times, I like to slog through my implementation of Raft, Paxos and VR. Not everybody wants to build generic crud app number 1,200,674. Coding is for solving problems, the problems might be engineering or just pure fun.

Seeing how other people solve problems opens up new ways for me to solve my own. Many people are not RTFM but instead want applied examples.

I don't know if I feel any negativity, but this is the first time I actually thought 'the price of subscription is approximately equal the price of Opus tokens needed to build a custom version of this for myself'... and got a bit scared TBH

Thank you, I really appreciate you signing up.

I agree with you on pattern recognition. AlgoDrill is built around taking patterns people already understand and turning them into something their hands can write quickly under pressure. You rebuild the solution line by line with active recall, small objectives, and first principles explanations after each step, so it is more than just memorizing code.

You are also right about the language gap. Right now the drills are Python first, but I am already working on full support for JavaScript, Java, and C++ across all problems, and I will have all of those in by the end of this year. I want people to be able to practice in the language they actually use every day, so your comment helps a lot.

> We know for a fact that most of the people that master intellectual problems do so via pattern recognition, not by reasoning.

Where is this fact stated, and who are "we" here? Sounds like an opinion or guess at best.

> Not really understanding the negativity here

There are two comments that could be read negativily, the rest is neutral or positive. I don't really understand the constant need for people to bring up what (they think) the rest of the comments said. Post your piece adding positivity if you want, but most of the time comments end up a fair mix so any time someone adds a snippet like that, it turns outdated in a few hours.

> 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.

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

The negativity here with me is because it feels like clickbait and like a scammy ad to manipulate me into purchasing.

It is almost lying. I find it unethical and I don't think there are 17 lifetime access spots, it's just artificial hype that doesn't make sense to me.

Marketing (at least like this) is basically lying.

> Not really understanding the negativity here.

In the last year or so HN seems to have attracted a lot of people (plus some bots) who seem to have been socialized on Reddit.

I don't know if these people are ignorant of what a good discussion forum can be (because they've never experienced one) or just don't care, but I do wish we could see more reflection on the second-order impacts of posting, and a move away from the reflexive negativity that mimics the outer face of good criticism while totally missing the thought and expertise good criticism requires.

That is a good first approximation, but it is a bit more guided than a plain Anki deck. For each problem there is a structured study page and an interactive practice mode.

NeetCode 150 is a popular curated list of LeetCode problems that covers the core interview patterns people expect nowadays, like sliding window, two pointers, trees, graphs, and dynamic programming. I used that set as the base so you are not guessing which problems to focus on, and more problems and patterns are being added on top of that core set regularly.

On the study side, each problem has a consistent structure with the core idea, why that pattern applies, and a first principles walkthrough of the solution. On the practice side, the solution is broken into small steps. Each step has a clear objective in plain language, and you rebuild the code line by line by filling in the missing pieces. After you answer, you see a short first principles explanation tied to the line you just wrote, so you are actively recalling the logic instead of just reading notes.

You can repeat problems and patterns as much as you want, mark problems as solved or unsolved, and filter by pattern so you can focus on the ones you struggle with most. There is not a full automatic review schedule yet. For now you choose what to review, and the goal is to use that progress data to track weak patterns, guide what you should drill next, and add more types of focused drills over time.

Any company still using LeetCode at all during interviews is signaling that either they are run like a frat house, or are so dim/indifferent that they're unwittingly cargo-culting one.

I don't like doing the leetcode grind, but all of the alternatives are strictly worse.

* Take home projects filter out people with busy lives. Wastes 100 people's time to hire 1 person. Can't be sure they didn't cheat. No incentives to stop company from giving you a 10 hour assignment and then not looking at it. The candidate with the most time to waste wins.

* Relying on academic credentials unfairly favors people from privileged backgrounds and doesn't necessarily correlate with skill as an engineer.

* Skipping the tech interview and just talking about the candidate's experience is prone to favoring bullshitters, plus you'll miss smart people who haven't had their lucky break yet.

* Asking "practical" questions tends to eliminate people without familiarity with your problem domain or tech stack.

* We all know how asking riddles and brainteasers worked out.

With leetcode, the curriculum is known up front and I have some assurance that the company has at least has some skin in the game when they schedule an engineer to evaluate me. It also tests your general knowledge and in some part intelligence as opposed to testing that you have some very narrow experience that happens to overlap with the job description.

Used to be in the same camp here until I had to interview for a specialist role. I'd happily swap Leetcode rounds and doing away with the highly subjective - design a class hierarchy nonsense.

"grinding" is doing something repetitively, with the connotation that it is difficult and goal-oriented.

"farming" is the same but without the difficulty: just doing an easy but boring task repeatedly because it gets you something else that you want.

The phrase "grinding LeetCode" refers to a kind of unmentionable self-stimulus indulged in by people who want tech jobs money, but are bad at software engineering, and who want to work with other people who are bad at software engineering.

It was most popular during zero interest rate phenomenon, when there were numerous investment scams based on startup companies that could have a very lucrative "exit" for those running the scheme, despite losing money as a business.

LeetCode falls out of favor when companies realize they need to build viable businesses, and need software engineers rather than theatre performances.

Not really, its quite easy to tell if you havent prepped well. The place where AI is good is online assessments.

Some might consider that a kind of commentary on the leet code interview format.