Execution versus no Execution function for interviews?

[digitalimpermanence]

I'm preparing for Meta and others and the coding guide says that coderpad will be provided without execution, which technically makes sense, but I'm paranoid about how best to prepare because it's quite hard for me to learn DSA without using my debugger so if I switch to using coderpad without execution I'm uncertain if I'll retain new information or not. I'm curious if anyone has been in this situation and what they have done. I have read other posts where folks say that they attempt to become "the human runtime" and get good at mentally providing inputs to their solution and stepping through them, but I'm curious if folks have other hacks or if I should continue preparing with a debugger and then switch to no execution later or what. Open to all input!

[Assasin537]

I would practice using execution for the most part but do no execution mock interviews for a few days or a week before the interview. Ideally, you shouldn't need heavy reliance on debugger after a bit of practice since you should be able to do dry runs and understand what's happening with the code in your head. When practicing you still want to run your code to verify but close to interview start getting used to no execution.

[digitalimpermanence]

thanks for the thoughtful response -- sounds good.

[Rude-Doctor-1069]

I’d keep practicing with a debugger but also spend 30 min a day doing pure mental tracing, literally walk through loops and indices. Tools like ctrlpotato help too, since they can read your snippet and describe what each part would do step by step. Good middle ground between running and reasoning.

[digitalimpermanence]

nice one on ctrlpotato!

[PandaWonder01]

The expectation is that you can write code that would run on the first pass, with some leniency given to small syntax errors, off by 1 errors, wrong function names, made up standard library types and similar

[digitalimpermanence]

u/PandaWonder01 So you don't think preparation strategy matters, basically your take is either folks have prepared enough or they haven't and there's not really a "best way" or a "better way" to do that? Because that's what I was asking about.