←back to thread

Show HN: AlgoDrill – Interactive drills to stop forgetting LeetCode patterns

(algodrill.io)
178 points henwfan | 3 comments | 09 Dec 25 11:09 UTC | HN request time: 0.589s | source

I built AlgoDrill because I kept grinding LeetCode, thinking I knew the pattern, and then completely blanking when I had to implement it from scratch a few weeks later.

AlgoDrill turns NeetCode 150 and more into pattern-based drills: you rebuild the solution line by line with active recall, get first principles editorials that explain why each step exists, and everything is tagged by patterns like sliding window, two pointers, and DP so you can hammer the ones you keep forgetting. The goal is simple: turn familiar patterns into code you can write quickly and confidently in a real interview.

https://algodrill.io

Would love feedback on whether this drill-style approach feels like a real upgrade over just solving problems once, and what’s most confusing or missing when you first land on the site.

Show context
epolanski ◴[09 Dec 25 12:30 UTC] No.46204220[source]▶
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.

The thing I really don't like is the lack of TypeScript or at least JavaScript, which are the most common languages out there. I really don't enjoy nor use Java/Python/C++.

replies(6): >>46204334 #>>46204340 #>>46204359 #>>46204604 #>>46205097 #>>46210586 #
embedding-shape ◴[09 Dec 25 12:47 UTC] No.46204359[source]▶
> 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.

replies(1): >>46204507 #
epolanski ◴[09 Dec 25 13:04 UTC] No.46204507[source]▶
There's lots of psychological and anthropological studies behind the fact that most experts in various fields excel due to pattern recognition not reasoning.

Going back to the chess example, while chess masters are incredible at analyzing complex positions they can recognize as "similar to", their advantage over normal human beings is very small when positions are completely randomized.

"Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise", by Ericsson goes more in depth of the topic, but there's lots of literature on the topic.

replies(2): >>46204943 #>>46205709 #
1. pcthrowaway ◴[09 Dec 25 13:54 UTC] No.46204943[source]▶
> their advantage over normal human beings is very small when positions are completely randomized.

The book you referenced does not say they're comparable to normal players at playing from a random position.

Normal players are almost as good as them at recalling a nonsensical board of random pieces.

The suggestion that the advantage of a chess master over a normal player is "very small" at playing from a random position is laughable.

replies(1): >>46204982 #
2. epolanski ◴[09 Dec 25 13:59 UTC] No.46204982[source]▶
I obviously meant it as a delta over the recognizable lines.
replies(1): >>46205868 #
3. pegasus ◴[09 Dec 25 15:21 UTC] No.46205868[source]▶
That wasn't obvious at all. I interpreted it as the chess masters lacking an advantage at playing from randomized position, which would be consistent with the claim you were supporting, as opposed to recalling which is neither here nor there.