Hello everyone.

You might remeber me because of my previous story I posted one year ago. This post is going to be an update after another at year at leetcode and a couple of new advice for newbies and just regular leetcoders.

Anyway this is Ruslan. I'm 32 years old and today is another small anniversary. Two year ago I joined this community. Many things had changed since the moment I joined except only one thing. I still try to do my best and follow my own advice I gave one year ago to everybody - study everyday. I keep thinking it's a key to success almost in any activity. I didn't matter in which mood I was or what had happened I keep practicing. I made another important "explaration", it's a great idea to resolve problem previously solved problems. Many times I noticed that even if you already solved a problem and you think you know the general idea you still should try and solve in again. I'll explain why later on in this article.

Following pattern of my previous article : By now I’ve solved almost 1505 different questions. 447 - easy, 890 - medium, 168 - hard.
Here're my stats:

"OMG you're the greatest liar, you tell us to study every day and you don't follow your own advice." - you may catch me. You'll be right I missed several days because of different external factors. But the general idea is the same, don't stop keep pushing.

Another important observation I made - you should participate in leetcode contests. Even if it feels painful and awfull. You affraid. You feel youself ashamed because of your bad contest performance. Just set your teeth and go on. Doing so eventually you'll find yourself in a situation when you just read a task and you already know how to solve it. It's an amazing feeling - trust me.
Let's have at my rating and performance during 88 contests I participated in.

As you can see there were faults and there were wins. The best place I had - 665 during Biweekly Contest 47and the worse one - 8031 during Weekly Contest 199. Overall rating keeps going up. The main idea here is the same - keep practicing. I'd compare participation in leetcode contest with real coding interview. You're given tasks, time is limited you have to find solution even if it's the most optimal one. Except one thing - during real interview you have a chance to ask clarifying questions. If you're stuck do one simple thing - ask you're self what do you need to do, what actual task ask you to do.

So far I went through 30-40 interview with many companies including FAANG and other huge companies. Because of me solved so many questions I don't remember any single interview where I failed to solve problem they asked me to solve. I'd say there were only 3 outcomes:

• I'm given task and I already saw it or solved it.
• I haven't seen this given task but I remember how to solve similar tasks.
• I have no idea how to solve given task but because of contest experience I start thinking out loud and ask clarifying questions.
  And this is it. I'd say it isn't rocket science. Topics in computer science are limited as well as patterns and data structures.

I cannot provide you with a super helpful technique to get to the point of solving 1500 tasks or method how to nail any coding interview. I think there isn't such way. Some techniques work for some people others don't. I selected the most simple and the most longest possible way - solve everything at leetcode and if necessary repeat. Sound scary but you need to start solving problems and soon you find you self studing for 2,3,5,6,12 mounth and not struggling with problems as you pveviously did.

So once again thank you spending your time on this article. Hope see you guys in 3rd year anniversary update post.

!!!AND ALWAYS REMEMBER!!!