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178 points henwfan | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.197s | 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.

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pelagicAustral ◴[] No.46204606[source]
Any company using leetcode as their primary way to assess competency is time wasting, soulless black hole unworthy of any real talent.
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noident ◴[] No.46204921[source]
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.

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1. stuaxo ◴[] No.46207524[source]
Its not good for the whole cohort of people who are good at their jobs and aren't good at leetcode.

You're filtering out people who don't have a lot of extra time on their hands to get good at one particular kind of puzzle.

Time poor people like parents, or people that are talented but busy in their current jobs.