Ask HN: LeetCode, anyone still doing it? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: LeetCode, anyone still doing it?

19 pointskwar1313 comments

Few years ago leetcode was all the range with an entire cottage industry around it for acing tech interviews. I feel like now with the advent of AI it has completely gone away. I haven't done a technical interview in a long while but not even sure if it's still the dominant screening tool.

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I wonder the same sometimes, but I still do it to brush up my problem-solving skills and fundamental understanding of systems and data structures. AI can make mistakes. I was implementing LRU Cache using a linked list, and AI coding did it well, but it wasn’t fitting for my system. I had a better understanding of the context, so maybe I failed to provide enough problem context to AI.

The meta is definitely shifting. Since AI can now instantly output a flawless solution to almost any medium/hard LeetCode problem, asking someone to write it from memory on a whiteboard feels entirely disconnected from 2026 reality. What I'm seeing more of now is a heavy shift towards System Design, architecture, and "Code Review" interviews where you are given AI-generated code and asked to find the hidden bugs or security flaws.

I feel that companies are shifting towards short take home assignments which I find good personally.

Grinding leetcode was never optimizing for solving problems algorithmically but for performing well in live coding interviews.

So knowing solution design, time/space complexity, what tools and patterns exist for certain sets of problems is valued more than being able to correctly type them out in an unfamiliar UI often with limited functionality, while someone watches your face and screen and ideally you have to articulate your thought process clearly within 20 minutes or so.

Mmm, I stopped doing leetcode back in 2024 because I realized that even though I was able to build highly efficient small portions of code, I wasn't actually able to build real software because I wasn't able to put all these small pieces together, so far I think it was a good decision because now I'm able to build real software. As for the current state in interviews I have no idea, but personally I think is not as importart or useful for most situations when developing software.

What did you do to bridge the gap between small portions of code and real software?

think of any type of software project, it's just a lot of functions calling to each other, getting that to scale without becoming a mess was really hard to me, so what I did was that I started to try different architectural patterns to see what worked for me, my current coding style is a mix of 1) functional programming, 2) hexagonal architecture, and 3) test driven development; and I found that object oriented programming is not good at all it causes plenty of problems as the codebase grows, I mention OOP because is one of the most mentioned ones but I think is not that good.

I develop in TypeScript, so I use the library Effect plenty of it follows functional programming principles, it also has dependency inyection with the objects Context and Layer which can be used for hexagonal architecture and for test driven development I use vitest

I do it - but more like a crossword. Do one a day or so

Same issues though - normally comes down to knowing a trick rather for leetcode than actual coding

Its getting phased out, just like explaining your python experience. not saying its gone, but getting more irrelevant with AI.

I'm not interviewing currently but I would laugh if given a leetcode problem and expected not to use AI

It depends on whether nowadays FLAG will still need engineer write code during interview.

Do interviewers still ask LC questions?

It's been a while since I last interviewed.

Wouldn't solving algorithms now be like solving Sudoku?

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