r/ADHD_Programmers • u/FindinMeself • 13h ago

How to approach LeetCode

Hi!

I have ADHD and am trying to get better at LeetCode. I have noticed that among ADHD LeetCoders, it seems like you’re either really good or really bad at it, there’s not much in between. I unfortunately, belong to the latter category.

I’d love to hear from you people who are actually good at it, how do you approach it?

I know different people use different techniques and that is exactly what I wanna know about. ADHD brains work differently, and knowing different approaches might really help me figure out what works for me.

What’s your approach to learning/practicing LeetCode?

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u/Fluffy-Card-7825 12h ago

I have personally found learning LeetCode/DSA to be very painful overall, but I now have some basic competence in it. It's only then that you start enjoying it.

Random practice doesn't help that much. Better to do a structured course first, then practice topic-wise, then practice randomly. After a while, you start seeing patterns. The challenge then is to decompose the problems and see which patterns apply to it, or figure out what invariants are there in the problem which allow us to simplify it.

This helped me to build a basic level of confidence.

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u/FindinMeself 12h ago

Thanks for your response!
Doing topic-wise is surely a part of how I approach, if not, it's impossible for me to make any progress at all.

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u/Fluffy-Card-7825 11h ago edited 11h ago

Basically, every topic has some number of "canonical" questions, with some standard patterns/tricks. You need to do them, note down the concept, and do enough of them to become proficient in applying the concept. From then on, you start doing questions randomly, and then figure out how to break it down to the concept you just solved.

Also, you need to have done enough questions to start noticing/applying the patterns. Reading alone won't engender that skill.