They force you think of o(n) and train you better than anything else on how to write your functions (but not how to organise them).
I agree. I think it's all about blind spots. A software engineer spends most of the time reading code, and the changesets they write most of the time are not algorithms or any fancy iteration beyond doing a vanilla for loop over a collection. leetcode-type exercises tend to invert that tendency, and present us with challenges which we would only rarely tackle. It's a good exercise in the sense that it forces a type of usecase we don't often use. Still, their practical usefulness beyond coding crossword puzzles is very limited.
They force you think of o(n) and train you better than anything else on how to write your functions (but not how to organise them).
I have around 600 leetcode exercises solved, and there's a big difference in skill between the person i was before leetcode and the person i am now.
I agree. I think it's all about blind spots. A software engineer spends most of the time reading code, and the changesets they write most of the time are not algorithms or any fancy iteration beyond doing a vanilla for loop over a collection. leetcode-type exercises tend to invert that tendency, and present us with challenges which we would only rarely tackle. It's a good exercise in the sense that it forces a type of usecase we don't often use. Still, their practical usefulness beyond coding crossword puzzles is very limited.