17/05/23 RR10 My Study Plan 🤓📚

Coding Preparation Plan

This is my coding preparation plan that I hope to follow during the time frame. Many things were adopted from other interview prep guides, some were suggested by more experienced coders. Everything was then customised according to my knowledge and experience.

Time frame: ~5 months (mid May - October)

Goal: Hone my programming skills, improve Java knowledge, and solve complex problems to become a more proficient and confident coder 🚀💻

Table of Contents

• Upcoming Projects 🎯
• My Timetable 📅
• Background 📚
• Overview 👀
• Plan 📝
  • First phase: Summer Time 🏝
  • Second Phase: Autumn Term 🍂
  • Extra Time ⏰
• Show Your Support 🤝

Upcoming Projects 🎯

• RR15: Unconfirmed Title (Work in Progress 🚧)

My Timetable 📅

Week 1 beginning 21/05/23:

#	Problem Name	Difficulty	Estimated Time	Topic
1	Two Sum		15 mins	Array
2	Valid Parentheses		20 mins	Stack
3	Merge Two Sorted Lists		20 mins	Linked List
4	Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock		20 mins	Array
5	Valid Palindrome		15 mins	String
6	Invert Binary Tree		15 mins	Binary Tree
7	Valid Anagram		15 mins	String
8	Binary Search		15 mins	Binary Search
9	Flood Fill		20 mins	Graph
10	Maximum Subarray		20 mins	Dynamic Programming
11	Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Search Tree		20 mins	Binary Search Tree
12	Insert Interval		25 mins	Array
13	01 Matrix		30 mins	Graph
14	K Closest Points to Origin		30 mins	Heap
15	Balanced Binary Tree		15 mins	Binary Tree

Week 2 beginning 28/05/23:

#	Problem Name	Difficulty	Estimated Time	Topic
1	Linked List Cycle		20 mins	Linked List
2	Implement Queue using Stacks		20 mins	Stack
3	First Bad Version		20 mins	Binary Search
4	Ransom Note		15 mins	Hash Table
5	Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters		30 mins	String
6	3Sum		30 mins	Array
7	Binary Tree Level Order Traversal		20 mins	Binary Tree
8	Clone Graph		25 mins	Graph
9	Evaluate Reverse Polish Notation		30 mins	Stack
10	Course Schedule		30 mins	Graph
11	Implement Trie (Prefix Tree)		35 mins	Trie
12	Coin Change		25 mins	Dynamic Programming

Week 3 beginning 04/06/23:

#	Problem	Difficulty	Estimated Time	Topic
1	Product of Array Except Self		30 mins	Array
2	Climbing Stairs		20 mins	Dynamic Programming
3	Longest Palindrome		20 mins	String
4	Min Stack		20 mins	Stack
5	Reverse Linked List		20 mins	Linked List
6	Validate Binary Search Tree		20 mins	Binary Search Tree
7	Number of Islands		25 mins	Graph
8	Rotting Oranges		30 mins	Graph
9	Search in Rotated Sorted Array		30 mins	Binary Search
10	Combination Sum		30 mins	Array
11	Permutations		30 mins	Recursion
12	Merge Intervals		30 mins	Array

Week 4 beginning 11/06/23:

#	Problem	Difficulty	Estimated Time	Topic
1	Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Tree		25 mins	Binary Tree
2	Time Based Key-Value Store		35 mins	Binary Search
3	Minimum Window Substring		30 mins	String
4	Serialize and Deserialize Binary Tree		40 mins	Binary Tree
5	Trapping Rain Water		35 mins	Stack
6	Find Median from Data Stream		30 mins	Heap
7	Majority Element		20 mins	Array
8	Add Binary		15 mins	Binary
9	Diameter of Binary Tree		30 mins	Binary Tree
10	Middle of the Linked List		20 mins	Linked List

Week 5 beginning 18/06/23:

#	Problem	Difficulty	Estimated Time	Topic
1	Accounts Merge		30 mins	Graph
2	Sort Colors		25 mins	Array
3	Word Break		30 mins	Trie
4	Partition Equal Subset Sum		30 mins	Dynamic Programming
5	String to Integer (atoi)		25 mins	String
6	Spiral Matrix		25 mins	Matrix
7	Subsets		30 mins	Recursion
8	Binary Tree Right Side View		20 mins	Binary Tree
9	Longest Palindromic Substring		25 mins	String
10	Word Ladder		45 mins	Graph

Week 6 beginning 25/06/23:

#	Problem	Difficulty	Estimated Time	Topic
1	Basic Calculator		40 mins	Stack
2	Maximum Profit in Job Scheduling		45 mins	Binary Search
3	Merge k Sorted Lists		30 mins	Heap
4	Largest Rectangle in Histogram		35 mins	Stack
5	Maximum Depth of Binary Tree		15 mins	Binary Tree
6	Contains Duplicate		15 mins	Array
7	Unique Paths		20 mins	Dynamic Programming
8	Construct Binary Tree from Preorder and Inorder Traversal		25 mins	Binary Tree
9	Container With Most Water		35 mins	Array
10	Letter Combinations of a Phone Number		30 mins	Recursion

Week 7 beginning 02/07/23:

#	Problem Name	Difficulty	Estimated Time	Topic
1	Word Search		30 mins	Graph
2	Find All Anagrams in a String		30 mins	String
3	Minimum Height Trees		30 mins	Graph
4	Task Scheduler		35 mins	Heap
5	LRU Cache		30 mins	Linked List
6	Kth Smallest Element in a BST		25 mins	Binary Search Tree
7	Daily Temperatures		30 mins	Stack
8	House Robber		25 mins	Dynamic Programming
9	Meeting Rooms		20 mins	Array
10	Roman to Integer		20 mins	Math
11	Backspace String Compare		15 mins	Stack

Week 8 beginning 23/07/23:

#	Problem Name	Difficulty	Estimated Time	Topic
1	Gas Station		30 mins	Array
2	Next Permutation		30 mins	Recursion
3	Valid Sudoku		35 mins	Matrix
4	Group Anagrams		25 mins	String
5	Maximum Product Subarray		30 mins	Dynamic Programming
6	Design Add and Search Words Data Structure		35 mins	Trie
7	Pacific Atlantic Water Flow		30 mins	Graph
8	Remove Nth Node From End of List		20 mins	Linked List
9	Shortest Path to Get Food		30 mins	Graph
10	Find the Duplicate Number		20 mins	Binary

Week 9 beginning 30/07/23:

#	Problem Name	Difficulty	Estimated Time	Topic
1	Top K Frequent Words		30 mins	Heap
2	Binary Tree Maximum Path Sum		35 mins	Binary Tree
3	Maximum Frequency Stack		40 mins	Stack
4	Counting Bits		15 mins	Binary
5	Longest Increasing Subsequence		30 mins	Dynamic Programming
6	Graph Valid Tree		30 mins	Graph
7	Course Schedule II		35 mins	Graph
8	Swap Nodes in Pairs		25 mins	Linked List
9	Path Sum II		25 mins	Binary Tree
10	Longest Consecutive Sequence		30 mins	Array

Week 10 beginning 06/08/23:

#	Problem Name	Difficulty	Estimated Time	Topic
1	Rotate Array		25 mins	Array
2	Odd Even Linked List		25 mins	Linked List
3	Decode String		30 mins	Stack
4	Contiguous Array		30 mins	Array
5	Maximum Width of Binary Tree		20 mins	Binary Tree
6	Find K Closest Elements		30 mins	Heap
7	Longest Repeating Character Replacement		30 mins	String
8	Median of Two Sorted Arrays		40 mins	Binary Search
9	Same Tree		20 mins	Binary Tree
10	Number of 1 Bits		15 mins	Binary
11	Longest Common Prefix		20 mins	String

Week 11 beginning 13/08/23:

#	Problem Name	Difficulty	Estimated Time	Topic
1	Inorder Successor in BST		30 mins	Binary Search Tree
2	Jump Game		20 mins	Dynamic Programming
3	Add Two Numbers		25 mins	Linked List
4	Generate Parentheses		25 mins	Recursion
5	Sort List		25 mins	Linked List
6	Number of Connected Components in an Undirected Graph		30 mins	Graph
7	Minimum Knight Moves		35 mins	Graph
8	Subarray Sum Equals K		35 mins	Array
9	Asteroid Collision		30 mins	Stack
10	Random Pick with Weight		25 mins	Math

Week 12 beginning 20/08/23:

#	Problem Name	Difficulty	Estimated Time	Topic
1	Kth Largest Element in an Array		30 mins	Heap
2	Longest Increasing Path in a Matrix		40 mins	Graph
3	Longest Valid Parentheses		35 mins	Stack
4	Design In-Memory File System		40 mins	Trie
5	Employee Free Time		35 mins	Array
6	Single Number		15 mins	Binary
7	Palindrome Linked List		20 mins	Linked List
8	Move Zeroes		20 mins	Array
9	Maximal Square		30 mins	Dynamic Programming
10	Rotate Image		25 mins	Matrix

Week 13 beginning 03/09/23:

#	Problem Name	Difficulty	Estimated Time	Topic
1	Binary Tree Zigzag Level Order Traversal		25 mins	Binary Tree
2	Design Hit Counter		30 mins	Queue
3	Path Sum III		35 mins	Binary Tree
4	Pow(x, n)		20 mins	Math
5	Search a 2D Matrix		30 mins	Binary Search
6	Largest Number		20 mins	String
7	Word Search II		40 mins	Graph
8	Alien Dictionary		45 mins	Graph
9	Bus Routes		45 mins	Graph

Week 14 beginning 10/09/23:

#	Problem Name	Difficulty	Estimated Time	Topic
1	Symmetric Tree		20 mins	Binary Tree
2	Missing Number		15 mins	Binary
3	Decode Ways		25 mins	Dynamic Programming
4	Meeting Rooms II		30 mins	Array
5	Reverse Integer		25 mins	Math
6	Set Matrix Zeroes		25 mins	Matrix
7	Reorder List		25 mins	Linked List
8	Encode and Decode Strings		25 mins	String
9	Cheapest Flights Within K Stops		45 mins	Graph
10	All Nodes Distance K in Binary Tree		25 mins	Binary Tree
11	Sliding Window Maximum		35 mins	Array

Week 15 beginning 17/09/23:

#	Problem Name	Difficulty	Estimated Time	Topic
1	Palindrome Number		15 mins	Math
2	Convert Sorted Array to Binary Search Tree		20 mins	Binary Search Tree
3	Reverse Bits		15 mins	Binary
4	Subtree of Another Tree		20 mins	Binary Tree
5	Squares of a Sorted Array		20 mins	Array
6	3Sum Closest		30 mins	Array
7	Rotate List		25 mins	Linked List
8	Find Minimum in Rotated Sorted Array		30 mins	Binary Search
9	Basic Calculator II		30 mins	Stack
10	Combination Sum IV		35 mins	Dynamic Programming
11	Insert Delete GetRandom O(1)		20 mins	Hash Table
12	Non-overlapping Intervals		20 mins	Array

Week 16 beginning 01/10/23:

#	Problem Name	Difficulty	Estimated Time	Topic
1	Palindrome Pairs		40 mins	String
2	Reverse Nodes in k-Group		35 mins	Linked List
3	Sudoku Solver		40 mins	Matrix
4	First Missing Positive		35 mins	Hash Table
5	N-Queens		40 mins	Recursion
6	Smallest Range Covering Elements from K Lists		40 mins	Heap

Background 📚

Plan is based on existing preparation guides:

• Interview preparation guide bible from Sergey Makagonov
• List of Udacity courses developed with Google
• Good guide on GitHub
• Coding Interview University - A complete computer science study plan to become a software engineer
• Build your own X - Master programming by recreating favorite technologies from scratch
• Developer Roadmap - Interactive roadmaps, guides and other educational content to help developers grow in their careers
• LeetCode Animation - Demonstrate LeetCode questions in the form of an animation
• LeetCode Patterns - Problems are grouped under their respective subtopic, in order to focus on repeatedly applying common patterns rather than randomly tackling questions

To stay motivated during preparation:

• Programeme Instagram
• Tushar Roy’s YouTube Channel
• CS Dojo's YouTube Channel
• HackerRank's Youtube Channel
• Find someone who is also preparing for interviews and discuss problems together
• Mock interview each other
• Subway Surfers VS Code Extension - focus, focus, focus

Overview 👀

The areas I know:

• Software Development - Back-end & Front-end
• SQL - Data Analysis

The areas I need to work on:

• Algorithms & Data Structures (Stacks, Queues, Graphs, Trees, etc.) - 80% of time
• Object-Oriented Programming (in Java)
• System Design (Scalability 😏)
• Dynamic Programming
• Computer Architecture (Cache, RAM, etc.) - review the course
• Operating Systems (Processes and Threads, Scheduling) - review the course
• Computer Networks (especially TCP/IP) - review the course

Plan 📝

I have decided to split my plan into two phases (three months each): summer and autumn phases.

First phase: Summer Time 🏝

Time to dedicate:

• 10 hrs on weekdays, 2 hours on weekends
• 8 weeks
• Total: ( 10 + 4 ) x 8 = 112 hrs

Objective: solve > 200 problems on Leetcode! 😎

Programming language chosen: Java

Areas to work on:

• Algorithms (e.g. sorting)
• Data Structures (e.g. lists, stacks, queues, hash-map)
• Graphs (e.g. BFS, DFS)
• Trees (e.g. BST)
• Object-Oriented Programming (in C++)
• Dynamic Programming
• Mock Interviews - once a month

Where to study:

• Programming Challenges by Steven Skiena - first 3 chapters (theory only)
• LeetCode - start from easy Facebook, LinkedIn, Uber, AirBnb, then focus on middle and hard problems
• InterviewBit - go for another theory from video lectures and problems
• HackerRank, Codeforces - if time left for contests (to keep being interested in solving problems)
• Codefights
• Algorithm Design Canvas - general guides on how to solve algo problems
• Exercism - fun practice in own time
• FreeCodeCamp - open-source codebase and curriculum, learn to code for free.
• Programming Books - 📚 freely available programming books
• Abdul Bari - 🐐
• Bro Code - coding bootcamps hate him! See how he can teach you to code with this one weird trick...😅
• Neetcode - Try the problem for 10-15 minutes, watch the first (theory) part of the video solution, try the problem again and either solve it or stop after 30 min, then watch the rest of the video for the implementation, then fix your implementation if needed. If you didn’t get it on your own revisit the problem in a few days. Rinse and repeat.
• Structy - Data Structures & Algorithms made simple
• takeuforward - Great place to learn data structures, algorithms, most asked coding interview questions, real interview experiences

Comments:

• Push solved problems to Github for later usage to refresh memory

Second Phase: Autumn Term 🍂

Time to dedicate:

• TBD but less than previous phase due to other commitments
• 10 hrs on weekdays, 2 hours on weekends
• 8 weeks
• Total: ( 10 + 4 ) x 8 = 112 hrs, total: 224 hours (be realistic, 200 hrs will be good too 😉)

Objective: solve 100 more Leetcode problems! 😎

Areas to work on:

• Computer Architecture (Cache, RAM, etc.)
• Operating Systems (Processes and Threads, Scheduling)
• Computer Networks (especially TCP/IP)
• System Design (Scalability uuh, cool)
• Mock Interviews - once a week (on weekends)
• Keep solving LeetCode problems + Cracking the Coding Interview

Where to study:

• Computer Organization and Design by David Patterson
• Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach by Jim Kurose
• GitHub repos mentioned above
• Everything listed in Sergey’s post (MUST!!!)
• Pramp
• Gainlo - wanna pay?
• Distributed Systems - highly recommended
• Watch past interviews of people on Glassdoor, CareerCup

Extra Time ⏰

Everything listed here is optional. Even though it is not that realistic to dedicate time to all these, I will try doing it during rest time at leisure 😄

Read Books:

• The Mythical Man-Month by Brooks
• Inside the Black Box: The Simple Truth About Quantitative Trading

Develop own website/landing page:

• Yenbekbay.me
• Sarahlim.com

Improve existing codes:

• Software Engineering course project
• Data Mining course project - building financial models

Complete started courses:

• Python for Data Structures, Algorithms, and Interviews!
• Machine Learning

Open Source projects to contribute:

• QuantLib: the free/open-source library for quantitative finance

Physical:

• Buy a whiteboard/glassboard, put it in front of a mirror - good investment

Show Your Support 🤝

Thank you for taking the time to drop by and check out this revised study plan ☺️

If you've liked or found this helpful, please consider giving it a star 🌟 and supporting me on my journey to improve my programming skills and chase my aspirations. I'd love to hear your feedback on this project, so feel free to leave your thoughts and suggestions 📬

Every contribution counts and is deeply appreciated as I pursue a path of lifelong learning and aim to share meaningful content that connects with as many people as possible 🌎

Thank you again for your support! 🙏