Algorithms and Data Structures 1/2
Last updated
Last updated
Now you need to study algorithms and data structures, again with increasing complexity, specifically from Data Structures and Algorithms (DSA) courses.
Two main groups to focus on:
Basic data structures – lists, stacks, queues, sets, hash tables, dictionaries
Trees and graphs (we'll get back to these later)
There's a huge amount of paid and free materials, and many video lessons online.
Again - it's up to you, you can learn however you want, especially if you'll do it through thinking-through-writing - good luck and have fun cracking your brain!
If you want to save your time, here's an excellent and rock-solid plan.
Buy two books:
"Cracking the Coding Interview" by McDowell (latest edition)
"Programming Interviews Exposed" by Mongan
Study algorithm:
Study a topic from the book
Go practice it on Codewars:
Select relevant tags (Linked Lists, Binary Trees, Sets, etc.)
Focus on 5-6 kyu difficulty
Solve all available problems in each category
Also upload solutions to GitHub, in the same or separate repository. If you write notes through thinking-through-writing or maintain a blog about covered materials - you'll be amazed at how quickly you progress in understanding data structures and programming.
⚠️ Attention! When you've studied basic data structures, continue following the learning plan, we'll return to trees and more complex algorithms later. ⚠️
Answer to a possible question:
Hey Ivan, what about leetcode/neetcode?
Oh you are a nerd aren't you? What are you doing here?
LeetCode and NeetCode are good for practicing algorithms and data structures - you can definitely use them instead of Codewars. You may use any platform, just follow the book and solve problems to study each topic well.