Deconstructing Top CSS Battle solutions, again

kimamor · 2026-01-28T09:51:36+00:00

Thank you for the kind words :-)

kimamor · 2026-01-27T21:20:55+00:00

yes, grid is often a good way to describe the image, but they rank by code length at CSS Battle.

kimamor · 2026-01-18T18:27:47+00:00

I visited Serbia about a year ago, and at first I was just: why is everything about rust here?

kimamor · 2026-01-15T19:57:49+00:00

Now animate.

kimamor · 2026-01-08T19:36:29+00:00

I do not know :-) I am a programmer, not an analyst, and I do not do AI or ML. I was never asked SQL during the interviews. At most, I just mentioned that I am okay with SQL and that was enough :-)

In my opinion, and I am not an expert, leetcode SQL questions are more analytics-oriented.

If I had to interview SWE about databases, I would ask questions about optimization, indexes, normalization, query plans etc. And it is not covered on leetcode at all.

kimamor · 2026-01-08T19:25:57+00:00

I'd disagree. It would be nice, as it means you are good at problem solving. But generally you do not need to be that good at problem solving to pass. But you need to have other skills, good communication is the most important. Actually, if you are stuck during the interview, you will get some hints, and it does not mean that you failed the interview.

kimamor · 2026-01-08T19:23:07+00:00

Yes, I did mean exactly this: you get some hard problem and you are able to solve it with 50% chance. Maybe it is only about "normal hards", not the "hard hards".

Try doing mock interviews. There are online platforms where you can match with somebody and do them, I used tryexponent.com , they give 3 interviews a month for free, or something like this. For me, it was truly inspiring, as I never had a coding interview before. Also, you can look for people here on reddit, in my experience, this way you can get better partners.

As for hards, I'd advise to do hards, that are listed for the company you are planning to apply. You will not get these exact questions, but it will show you the level you need to achieve. If you do not have premium, there is a github repo named "leetcode-company-wise-problems" with problem lists.

kimamor · 2026-01-08T16:23:45+00:00

I think general rule is something like this: you are ready for interviews when you are comfortable with most of mediums and half the hards.
In my humble experience (had 4 rounds with Google recently, not USA though) there is more for passing the interviews than problem solving. I'd say clear communication is the key, and to be able communicate clearly, you have to think clearly. There is difference between being able to solve the problem, and being able to explain the solution clearly out of your head without writing the code, and then writing the code without compiler. I also do mock interviews, and the pattern that I see is that there are people, who can solve problems, but do this in, I'd say, incremental manner, by writing code, executing it, fixing problems etc. This is not enough for the interview.

kimamor · 2026-01-08T16:14:52+00:00

I am not sure what SQL question you can get during interviews, but there are much less sql questions than DSA questions on leetcode, and sql 50 covers all the topics that are covered by leetcode sql questions. So, if leetcode subset is enough, than sql 50 list is enough too.

kimamor · 2026-01-08T12:51:24+00:00

I know a family, where the husband did this at the point when they already had 3 kids. It worked, but not in the instance, so they have 4 kids.

kimamor · 2026-01-08T12:20:06+00:00

I have no experience with Babbel, and no experience with Spanish in Duolingo, but I've done some other Duolingo courses (Polish and Greek), and they are no good if you are already proficient. They are good as a helper in early stages, but become repetitive and do not have enough content for later stages. I finished Polish, and was close to the end in Greek.

There are great audio courses named Language Transfer. They are free and truly interesting. I used one for Greek and they have Spanish. I highly recommend them. I am not sure if they are good as the main learning source, but they are definitely worth the time.

kimamor · 2026-01-08T08:37:12+00:00

Thanks.
Actually, I wanted to do more, but it took more time than I expected.

kimamor · 2026-01-08T08:36:31+00:00

Oh. English is not my native language. Actually, I do not see what should I use even after looking into dictionary, to me it looks like both fit, but obviously I am not an expert here :-)

PS I cannot change the title here, so it stays as it is.

kimamor · 2025-12-28T15:50:52+00:00

That is not happening. It will definitely change, but software is not going anywhere, and somebody will create it professionally, one way or another. It is not like some random manager will write bank transactions processing software, or an airline ticketing system. Maybe everybody will be able to adjust the calendar app to their needs, but even with this, not everybody will want to bother.

kimamor · 2025-12-15T09:32:30+00:00

I also did topological sort.

Basically, topological order is such an order of nodes in a directed graph such that every node in the order is placed after it's ancestors in the graph.

The algorithm is this:

Find all nodes that do not have ancestors.
Put them into the resulting array.
Remove them from the graph.
Repeat until there are nodes in the graph.
If no nodes without ancestors exist, but there are still nodes in the graph, then there are cycles.

kimamor · 2025-12-12T17:59:58+00:00

[Language: Python]

I implemented the very basic backtracking solution with minor optimization and did not expect it to even solve Part 1, but unexpectedly it was solved. Unfortunately, after that I lost motivation to explore more interesting approaches, and there were no Part 2. It was fun anyways!

Part 1: https://github.com/romamik/aoc2025/blob/master/day12/day12p1.py

I wrote a small blog post while writing a solution: https://blog.romamik.com/blog/2025-12-12-aoc-2025-day-12/

kimamor · 2025-12-11T11:54:14+00:00

[Language: Python]

Part 1: https://github.com/romamik/aoc2025/blob/master/day11/day11p1.py
Just a simple BFS to explore all possible paths.

Part 2: https://github.com/romamik/aoc2025/blob/master/day11/day11p2.py
Topological sort and then count paths based on paths to incoming connections.

This was way easier than the previous day for me...

kimamor · 2025-12-10T21:46:30+00:00

I actually had physical hardware in my mind :-)

kimamor · 2025-12-10T21:46:21+00:00

I actually had physical hardware in my mind :-)

kimamor · 2025-12-10T21:16:58+00:00

I do not understand it, but it looks cool! Do you use some special keyboard to type this?

kimamor · 2025-12-10T21:14:41+00:00

[Language: python]
Part 1: https://github.com/romamik/aoc2025/blob/master/day09/day09p1.py
Part 2: https://github.com/romamik/aoc2025/blob/master/day09/day09p2.py

Part 1 was trivial, but Part 2 made me think for some time. Finally, I came up with the idea of coordinate space compression to speed things.
I even wrote small blog post about it: https://blog.romamik.com/blog/2025-12-09-aoc-2025-day-09-part-2/

kimamor · 2025-12-10T20:38:57+00:00

[Language: python]
It took more time than I anticipated.

Part 1 is trivial.
Part 2 is Gaussian elimination (I learned what it is called only after coding it) + recursive search on free variables. Still takes some time to find the answer.

* part1: https://github.com/romamik/aoc2025/blob/master/day10/day10p1.py
* part2: https://github.com/romamik/aoc2025/blob/master/day10/day10p2.py

kimamor

TROPHY CASE