May 28, 2021

It has been nearly 6 months since started to do leetcode problems. Today I have reaches a milestone - I have finished all the leetcode problems (1876 until today). This is a big achievement. I would like to go through this long process in this article.

Dec 2010 - Jan 2021: Slow Start

At start it was not easy for me. Although I understood the basic concept and design technique, I was not familiar with the design pattern so I had experienced quite a slow start. This lasted for about 1 ~ 2 months, where each day was quite painful for me. Medium problems looked hard to me, and for hard problems, it was almost impossible to resolve without checking the solutions somewhere first. My acceptance rate was extremely low at that time. That was quite frustrating.

Jan 2021 - Feb 2021: Ramping Up

I did not give up.

Things became a little better after February, when I accumulated around 900+ problems. Medium problems did not look hard any more, and there was quite a chance for me to solve hard problems. I was busy with preparing interviews at that time as well.

Mar 2021 - April 2021: Looking Good

I finished around 1200 problems when I got the Amazon offer. I did not stop. I have been treating leetcode as a daily routine since that time. As I am getting busy, the number of my daily submissions lowered quite a bit - I was not able to get 100+ submissions in a single day. However, as I am getting quite familiar with the algorithms and design patterns, I was able to solve most of the hard problems in general.

May 2021 - May 2021: Diminishing Return

After I reached 1500+ problems, things are slowed down again. The reason is that most of the leftover problems are hard problems, and it took a substantial amount of time to solve each individual one. At the same time, I did not enjoy solving problems - after all I got my offer already, why would I still do this?

But I kept going. Although I was slow, I did keep solving a few problems everyday. I finished all the problems today!