Ask HN: Is anyone using spaced repetition with LeetCode? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is anyone using spaced repetition with LeetCode?

9 pointsimedadel10 comments

I started using LeetCode a couple of months ago to prepare for my upcoming university internships and I found myself using Trello or similar apps in order to organize my learning.

Eventually, I made a chrome extension for reviewing old LeetCode questions using spaced repetition. The goal is, of course, not memorizing the question but rather making sure that the question's pattern "sticks" in my memory.

So I'm wondering if any of you have used this method while preparing for interviews and whether you found it helpful or not.

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I tried before, but it was quite demotivating to go back to the same questions and still not remember the answer. I'd rather just go and do new questions instead of repeatedly failing at an old one. It's probably not a good approach but better than nothing.

I did this with Anki when preparing for my last round of interviews.

After completing a question (working through on a whiteboard while imitating a coding interview session), I would make a card for it. General pattern and general algorithm to use to solve, then review it whenever Anki told me to. I found that it was better to focus on higher level concepts than worrying about exact algo implementations (though I did the exact implementations when first working through a problem).

I think this worked well, but I also probably have confirmation bias.

I’ve also used this technique for math/CS problems, and it has seemed to work well.

I did use Anki for scheduling my math problems' reviews and the results were pretty satisfactory.

Do you think I should publish the chrome extension that I made for LeetCode or does Anki do the job?

I think you should do it to learn and try something new (publishing a Chrome extension). I’m sure you could also write an interesting blog post about how you chose and implemented the spaced repetition.

Worst case scenario no one download it, but it’s like most side projects, where doing it for your own growth is the important part.

Well, I published it :D

https://spacedleet.imedadel.me

Would you mind sharing your deck?

Leetcode is a disease. I know many people memories answers and test cases.

Why would you do that? It's not about memorization. It's about understanding the problem so if you saw it reshaped differently, you can still come up with a valid solution.

Absolutely, it's just a way to schedule reviews. That is, I am not doing the same exercise every single day until I finally remember it.

It’s not about memorizing a particular solution, but the specific solution is only one piece. You should be able to look at the same or similar problem and identify the particular pattern. If you don’t remember the pattern, you’re doing a disservice to yourself by memorizing the solution. It means you need to rework that problem and work on other problems that rely on a similar problem solving approach. The goal is mastery of that specific pattern so it’s readily available in your toolkit.

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