AlgoExpert Review | Solving 100 of the finest Tech Interview Problems

So you want to prepare for technical interviews and you bumped into algoexpert.io , and you’re not sure whether you should purchase the course or not.

What is AlgoExpert ? in short :

• 100 Coding Questions with clear video solutions
• Founder is an Ex-Google engineer

visit the website for a more detailed explanation.

I’m in no way affiliated to AlgoExpert nor are there any affiliate links in this article.

To give some background about myself, I’ve completed all 100 questions on AlgoExpert recently.

AlgoExpert Certificate of Completion

I purchased the course on the 16th of May 2020 and when i started, I had completed an online course on Data Structures in C++ by Abdul Bari , which gave a really strong base of the theoretical part of the Data Structures as well as their low-level implementation in code. It also covered some really basic problems ( such as reversing a linked list ) so its clear how they are used in problems.

So to sum it up for AlgoExpert (according to me) you need to :

• have knowledge of the theoretical part of Data Structures ( what is the concept behind a linked list, when should it be used etc.)
• be able to Implement those Data Structures in code ( programming language doesn’t matter, choose what you’re comfortable with )
• be able to solve really easy/basic problems using them.

AlgoExpert’s goal is to prepare you for coding interviews, so naturally the difficulty level of the problems will be a bit on the higher side and to make sure that you are not in a position where you aren’t even able to understand the video solution of the problem, make sure you cover the above 3 prerequisites I’ve mentioned.

However, I didn’t know Graphs and Dynamic Programming when I started, and it was not covered in the Data Structures course I took, so I had to take a break and learn them first before attempting problems on AlgoExpert. So you can also solve them topic-wise too if you want. However, I feel a few problems in recursion needed knowledge of Trees beforehand, apart from that all of them were mutually exclusive.

Solving all 100 problems took me around 50–60 days. I completed half of them and got distracted by my other projects. I was building an application for my university

AbdulMalikDev/ounotes

Then I finally got back on track and completed the other half.

AlgoExpert also comes with a Data Structure Crash Course, however I felt it was more like a revision for someone who might have learned it a long time ago compared to a total beginner.

It also has a bonus section for Behavioral Interviews and Coding Interview tips.

Another reason to suggest AlgoExpert would be the quality of solutions provided in every problem. The code is always clean, modular and written with best practices in mind, exactly how you would want to write code in an interview. On other sites I’d find code which was written in as much less space as possible and really hard to comprehend.

The video solutions are on an average 30–40 minutes long, Clement ( founder of AlgoExpert ) explains the solution in great detail and in a way that even a child can understand the solution. He also sometimes mentions follow up questions and how we are supposed to deal with the interviewer if we happen to get that same problem in an interview ( which can be generalized ).

However, if you can’t afford it please don’t invest in it. There is nothing in this course that you cannot get for free. In fact if you combine Leetcode and YouTube you can get Problems + Solutions just like AlgoExpert.

I justified investing in this course because:

• It provided structure by giving a list of 100 problems covering almost all topics needed to ace an interview
• Clear video solutions with code so there’s no way you are not understanding any question
• Founder knows what he is doing and gives interview tips
• I had some pocket money saved up.
• He promoted it so much on his Youtube Channel that I finally gave in.

If you’re already proficient in Programming problems ( for example if you can solve most Leetcode Medium problems easily ) I wouldn’t recommend the platform, you should target more advance problems on other platforms instead.

However I think the platform can be improved in the following ways :

• Displaying the speed of the solutions like Leetcode would motivate users to write efficient solutions or understand how efficient the solution actually is.
• In some cases, my solution passed all tests in AlgoExpert but didn’t pass on Leetcode for the same problem and I figured out that I made a small mistake and didn’t cover an edge cases. So tests cases need to be improved a bit.
• Would be great to see some questions on Bit Manipulation too

Other than that I really loved the attention to detail in everything else and the minimalist UI of the platform.

I am a Software Developer who is obsessed with producing clean and maintainable code following well-known Software Architectures. I write about problems I have faced myself and how I improved overtime. If you’d like to see more such articles, make sure to follow me.

Till next time, folks ! astalavista !

Claps are weird, did you know you could clap up-to 50 times by repeatedly tapping that clap button? I’ve been on Medium for around 6 months and did not know that.