What are the go-to resources for learning Data Structures & Algorithms?
Am interested in some self paced online courses I can take from home, and one that ideally lead to some sort of certificate/badge/credential. Free resources would be best, but am willing to pay a few dollars for top quality.
Something like leetcode would be too advanced for me. I am familiar with programming but never formally learned it and have 0 knowledge of these topics.
Discussion
(2 comments)- 32 months agoTech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
For the broad approach, we have the masterclass about DSA prep.
For the tactics:
- Cracking the Coding Interview
- Neetcode (see perks for the discount)
- 1
2 months agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course HeroFor free resources, there's so many - You can just Google for them:
- YouTube - I found a nice series from CS Dojo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-l_UOFi1Xw
- Wikipedia - Yep, ol' faithful. Wikipedia pages for common data structures and algorithms tend to have good diagrams
- Medium - If you prefer reading instead of watching, Medium has a ton of great stuff (you are limited to just 5 articles a month though on free tier). Here's a tree example: https://medium.com/swlh/getting-started-with-trees-890889c4a38a
For paid resources, I found this one that's currently on sale for $20 and has a 30-day money back guarantee: https://www.udemy.com/course/master-the-coding-interview-data-structures-algorithms/
Zooming out though, I feel like you're intimidated by LeetCode when you really shouldn't be. Consuming content only gets you so far - I paid tens of thousands of $$$ to UCLA to sit in Computer Science classes, one of which was a DSA one. I honestly don't remember too much from DSA class. Pretty much all of my DSA learning came from charging into LeetCode, trying to solve the problems, (figuratively) banging my head against the wall, and eventually finally getting the concepts after tons of trial and error.
I think the most you should do is 30 minutes to 1 hour of reading/watching/listening per data structure or algorithm. After that, go straight into LeetCode and start tackling easy-level problems in that category. If you need help understanding why your solution doesn't work or why the correct solution is optimal, ChatGPT is incredible at these explanations.
Until you get a Big Tech interview (at which point I 100% recommend LeetCode Premium), you really don't need to pay a single cent to learn DSA. The availability of free resources is overwhelming, and ChatGPT just puts it over the top.
Here's another great discussion about this: "What would be the smart way for solving DS algorithms and cracking the coding interview for MAANG?"
