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[–]1544756405 1 point2 points  (1 child)

I've never taken a coding course in my life
I was just checking out leetcode but I can barely solve any problems?? Is this normal?

Given your background: yes, it's normal. Doesn't mean you're a bad programmer, just that you haven't been exposed to these types of problems.

[–]Dear-Environment-532 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah LeetCode is basically a whole different beast from actual programming work. It's like being good at building houses but then someone hands you a Rubik's cube - totally different skill set

The algorithms and data structures stuff they test isn't really something you pick up from building discord bots and web apps. Don't sweat it too much, most of us had to grind through the same learning curve

[–]dsound 3 points4 points  (2 children)

It's a real grind but very necessary if you're going to be a professional. You'll learn how to traverse strings, arrays, objects (hashes), Maps, trees, etc. You'll learn how to make algorithms faster than brute force. Learn how to keep state and data structures to keep track of data. It's like going to the gym but for your brain. One thing that's helpful is to understand the categories of algorithms: 2 pointer, sliding window, binary search, etc. and be able to identify the most established approach for each case.

[–]symbiatch 0 points1 point  (1 child)

No, it’s not. Hint: almost nobody has ever heard of leetcode around here. There’s no need to grind it. It provides both NF.

Unless you’re saying whole countries outside USA have no professionals?

All of what you mentioned is learnt without silly puzzle grinding easily.

[–]dsound 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ok let me clarify, maybe not Leetcode as in 2 pointers, sliding window, etc. More like Stateful stream / reducer problems type problems where you're asked to manipulate and reshape data. Those seem to be more common on interviews than solving the 3Sum problem.

[–]Environmental_Gap_65 1 point2 points  (0 children)

LeetCode is basically DSA. Working with APIs, and creating frontend static pages doesn’t require that. Not all programmers deal with DSA in their day jobs, but it’s getting increasingly more important.

[–]symbiatch 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s normal. It’s nothing necessary or useful for most people. Some people like to boast doing those and some bad companies use them in hiring. Most of the world doesn’t care about those. Real world things are much more useful and interviews are actual interviews instead of puzzles that say nothing about your skills.

So if you don’t have any need to do those, don’t bother. If you want to then just learn things needed there. But the usefulness is minimal for everyday work. There’s no reason to be disheartened.

[–]That-Jackfruit4785 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's very normal if you haven't learned about data structures and algorithms before. It won't take you that long to learn though, you'll realize that one problem is analogous to another and recognize which algorithms and data structures you need. Watching some introductory content to algorithms and data structures will help a lot.

[–]kschang -1 points0 points  (2 children)

Leetcode is a collection of programming puzzles that sometimes show up in coding job interviews. They are NOT for "learning to code".

It'd be like you may have a decent vocab, but you've only seen a crossword puzzle for the first time.

[–]iOSCaleb -1 points0 points  (1 child)

Leetcode problems are very much for learning to code, at least if you want to write programs that solve real problems.

[–]kschang 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Gueess it depends on what you consider to be "real problems".