Intro

This is my retrospective analysis after completing Arrays & Hashing from the Neetcode150 list.

Record

Here is the table of all attempts:

#	Result
1	✅
2	✅
3	✅
4	❌
5	❌
6	✅
7	❌
8	❌
9	❌

5 / 9 = 0.55556 = average

Thoughts

There are a few things I need to review. Here are my main weaknesses I’ve identified doing this challenge:

1. I need to know time complexities of certain operations performed by standard libraries.
2. I am trash at simple coding. I have to look stuff up constantly, be it syntax or insertions. I need to git gud.
3. I need to alternate between doing these when I am well rested and when I am tired.

Originally I stated I would do an entire section of Neetcode and then pivot certain aspects of this challenge if I needed to. I had no idea it would honestly be this difficult for me.

I’ve decided to continue with the same rules of the challenge. However, I will be making the following changes:

1. I will be practicing the basics of the ADT / Algo first before I attempt the entire section. I saw additional strategies in some obscure section of Neetcode site, so we will review more.
2. Before each section, I will stream me learning the basics without time limits.
3. I will only code once I have the algorithm. No more naive implementations!
4. We will increase the frequency of Leetcode challenges. I’ve been lazy about streaming. No more.
5. To decompress, I have decided to also stream general software development / programming for specific projects I want to complete. I already have three ideas for this.

I thought this would be much easier, but I was dead wrong. I like to troll/talk shit about how good my skills are, but this is a different type of coding. A lot of reactions I’ve read online are that this isn’t software development. It’s a specific type of mindset. DSA knowledge is vital to optimizing software, but I do think a lot of people don’t think about data this deeply. The goal for this challenge isn’t to get a job at a FAANG/MAANG/whatever acronym. The goal is to never fail an online assessment.

If I had to make an analogy for this, it would be similar to doing fundamental exercises and then combining them to optimize your performance in a sport. You practice each individual component over and over and then combine alternate movements. It’s the same, but just a little different.

I think I’ve pretty much decided I want to do SWE full time, but I have a breadth of experience that will give me an edge over entry level applicants. My background is in SRE, but with the way cloud providers provide everything, I feel this is a dead end for me interest wise. I’ll blog about this in the future.