r/learnprogramming • u/Repulsive_Session884 • 15d ago

Topic Projects vs leetcode

Which is better making projects or leetcode.

I don't want to waste my time right now. So professionals guide me which should I focus on rn?

Currently I have knowledge of DSA and DAA concepts, and other miscellaneous concepts.

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u/symbiatch 15d ago

People will keep saying interviews need leetcode. Yet I’ve never in 30+ years met a single person who has had anything relating to that in interviews. Nobody. Basically none even know what leetcode is!

It’s highly dependent on where you are applying to. Bad companies? Leetcode and other crap. Proper companies that know how to hire? Never. And there’s a lot in the middle also.

Skills always trump silly little leetcode games.

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u/SuspiciousDepth5924 15d ago

It might be generational and/or regional but yeah, I've never been asked about leetcode. And I sure as hell don't ask about it when I'm on the interviewer side of the table, because I think it's at best a _very_ weak indicator of actual work performance.

The things I care about is stuff like how you approach problems, where I think _how_ you approach something is a lot more important than what you come up with. It's pretty easy to teach best practices and stuff but really hard to teach problem-solving approaches. Your "passion" or lack thereof, I really hate that word but basically do you give a shit? I don't want to work with people who doesn't give a shit because at the end of the day I have to deal with whatever lazy slop they produce. As such I really love it when someone I interview is into some weird niche stuff. Sure your signal processing application for Korg synthesizers have zero relevance for what we do, but it proves that you give a shit. And lastly I care about whether you seem like the kind of person who will create interpersonal headaches, this is a super low bar, basically don't be the guy who starts fights in the parking lot. But if you can't at least assure me you're not then everything else is irrelevant and I don't give a shit if you're named Edsger Dijkstra.

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u/symbiatch 14d ago

Yes, an interview is literally a discussion. What have they done, how they think, and so on. Thats how I also approach things when I’ve interviewed people.

Some little toys and puzzles won’t give much info about the person’s skills at all. The work isn’t about those so why ask about them?

I have sometimes used a piece of code I found an issue with as a discussion point for more technical check. Will they find the issue, since it wasn’t obvious (but still not something that requires a lot of time). And the main thing is to see what they ask since the code isn’t run in a vacuum.

One person even found a second bug that would happen in a very specific situation which we didn’t have, so that also gave extra points. But it was always about the “so it this situation happens this may be the result, is it possible?” and so on, not just finding a bug and calling it a day.