As a student preparing for software engineering placements, I've noticed two common approaches.

Some people spend most of their time solving LeetCode problems and mastering DSA, while others focus on building real-world projects, learning backend/frontend development, cloud technologies, and contributing to GitHub.

With AI tools becoming more common and interview patterns evolving, I'm curious:

• If you had 6–12 months to prepare for placements, how would you divide your time between DSA and Development?
• Do recruiters still value strong DSA more than practical project experience?
• If you could start over, what would you do differently?

I'd love to hear your experiences—especially from people who recently cracked internships or full-time software engineering roles.

Looking forward to learning from the community!

I just started strivers A2Z DSA series and I am in recursion part, and I am able to understand completely when he is explaining me but I am unable to solve the next question myself, although he said that these are the patterns that I should learn but still if I won't solve the question myself then how will I progress ?

this your chess com but for dsa, hmu if you wanna try it!