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Comment by collinboler2 | Hacker News Reader

Yup, it’s essentially a daily habit for many devs these days, I think they've added more gamification (streaks, badges, contests) combined with a UI update that makes it feel less like "prep." (example: https://leetcode.com/quest/)

> Fun how it goes the opposite compared to the real security implications.

You're spot on, it is pretty interesting. I suggested the extension purely to bridge that trust gap, especially if it's verified by the Chrome Web Store. If the extension is designed to strictly avoid calling any external APIs (other than leetcode graphql), it makes exfiltration impossible, ensuring the cookie never leaves the user's browser

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> Yup, it’s essentially a daily habit for many devs these days

Beyond students/juniors? I don't think I've ever seen any of my colleagues or friends either talk about it or using it recreationally, but maybe I live in a different bubble.

I'm a student right now so I am certainly biased, but one senior dev (late 20s) from I company I interned at used it quite religiously despite being happily employed. I think some people feel it's a nice insurance policy to stay sharp

I think for some people, they treat it like the daily crossword. For seniors, I've known a few that would do problems in a different language so they can get some basic exposure to it. Eg. If you program node js all day, you'd do the daily problem in kotlin or rust.

I do both crosswords and frequently look at the daily leetcode problem. I don't always do it if the problem doesn't interest me. But sometimes I learn something new, other times I just hammer out a solution in 2-5 min for a little brain stimulation.

Making a habit of doing small puzzles like that can compound a lot over time. I am self taught and did not study algorithms in school, but I would consider myself stronger on the topic than most of my coworkers just from my learning to solve puzzles (and enjoying it). I am currently the senior / lead dev of my team.

I also love Advent of Code and look forwards to it all year.

I do both in languages that aren't what I primarily use at work.

> For seniors, I've known a few that would do problems in a different language so they can get some basic exposure to it.

Everyone including myself who does similar things of experimenting with different languages, do so with "real" (not sure what else to call it) programs on our machines for some purpose. Maybe recreate something else we did recently, or try it for that one specific use case we saw it potentially good for. Not doing random exercises on some online platform. I don't doubt some people find it satisfying, just interesting I don't find those people around me I guess.

There are large communities on the internet for solving competitive programming problems. Checkout Topcoder, Codeforces, etc. They have their own subculture and the regular winners are celebrities in that subculture. These people aren't solving these problems to get a job or interview with FANG or anything. They just do it as a sport. Like playing Chess or Scrabble.

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