Getting Started
Get a quick introduction to this path.
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If you are pressed for time and looking to optimize your interview preparation skills, then you are in the right place. Welcome to the Grind 75 Path, specifically designed to help you prepare for coding interviews with a focused and methodical approach. Before we begin, let’s have a high-level overview of this Path.
About the Path#
The secret to efficient preparation is to uncover and understand the underlying patterns in coding challenges. Therefore, this path focuses on the essential patterns found in top coding interview questions. It aims to streamline your preparation by ensuring you grasp these fundamental concepts, without overwhelming you with endless practice sets.
This path includes a mix of various patterns and difficulty levels. By incorporating a blend of complexities and diverse question types, we’ll ensure you are well-prepared to tackle a wide range of coding interview scenarios. It caters to both novice coders seeking a foundational understanding and experienced candidates aiming to refine their skills.
Additionally, if you are short on time for a thorough and complete preparation, then our path offers a slightly consolidated version, allowing you to make the most of your available time while not missing out on any valuable insight.
Path structure#
This path has eight distinct modules, each dedicated to a particular set of coding patterns. Within each module, there is a range of categories, each focusing on a specific pattern. Under each section, there are several lessons covering different coding problems that can be solved with the highlighted coding pattern. Every coding problem has two lessons against it – the challenge lesson and the solution lesson.
Challenge lesson: In this lesson, a step-by-step approach is taken for problem-solving. Illustrated examples and quizzes are used to facilitate an understanding of the problem's core concepts. Once the problem is understood, key logical building blocks for the solution are provided, allowing the creation of a strategic outline. Additionally, there are code templates that can be used to simplify the coding process, enabling a focus on the logic of the solution.
Solution lesson: In this lesson, a basic solution is explained first, and then it is enhanced with optimization techniques from the pattern. A visual representation of the solution shows how variables and data structures change. The solution code is provided along with detailed comments that aid in understanding the solution implementation. Moreover, there is a time and space complexity analysis that helps to compare different solutions and consider efficiency when writing the solution code.
The illustration below lists all the modules and their patterns:
There are a total of 23 patterns and 75 coding challenges that you'll master in this path.
About this module#
We’ll begin our path with this first module—Two Pointers & Co. Let’s take a look at what topics we’ll cover:
Warming up: We’ll first refresh a few foundational programming skills. The first two problems, Add Binary and String to Integer (atoi), cover basic math operations, string manipulation, and data type conversions. Moreover, focusing on these basic challenges will teach us why it’s important to read and understand problems carefully. This is because, at times, the key to solving a problem lies in noticing hidden information, specific instructions, or unusual conditions mentioned in the problem statement.
Two Pointers: Learn how to use the Two Pointers pattern to efficiently narrow down the search space in arrays. This pattern is commonly applied to tasks, such as searching for specific values, identifying subarrays, or enhancing algorithms by minimizing unnecessary iterations.
Fast and Slow Pointers: Learn about the Fast and Slow Pointers pattern, which is a variant of the Two Pointers pattern. Here, the two pointers move at different speeds to traverse the input list to get to the solution. This pattern is used to solve problems that involve detecting cycles, finding middle elements, comparing elements at different positions, or solving partitioning, merging, or intersection problems.
Modified Binary Search: Learn about the Modified Binary Search pattern, which is a variation of the classic Binary Search. It adjusts the search boundaries based on the problem’s specific requirements. This pattern is typically employed when dealing with coding challenges that require identifying extreme values (maximum or minimum), tolerance-based searches, managing rotated arrays, and identifying first/last occurrences, leading to more efficient solutions in these scenarios. .
Add Binary