The coding test can be extremely difficult for anyone who has little to no experience taking them. I personally have failed the coding test multiple times and am still trying to figure out what to do to pass at least one of these tests. I document my journey unto how to pass these tests in this blog.

Today, I have a Tesla Test. My lack of implementing Data Structures and Algorithms with Python has made this position difficult to obtain. As a result, I have created this guide to help myself (and others) have a concrete list of what to go over the day of the test.

Merge Sort - This is one of the classic sorting algorithms, mainly because of its terrific time complexity of O(n log n).

Binary Tree - Again, this reduces the time complexity, and is a useful way of sorting values.

Heap - A type of binary tree. Personally, I think this is useful to implement because it is a commonly asked question and practices recursion effectively, which people usually don’t have a good amount of experience in.

Graph - Used in many applications with regards to pathfinding, machine learning and networking. Implementing Depth First Search and Breadth First Search is also effective.

Linked List - This is a classic data structure that is constantly asked in Leetcode problems. It also implements properties, which is a useful way to learn syntax of the language in hand.

Stack - Another commonly implemented data structure. This is used in Depth first search, and to reverse items effectively, or a way to store items and look at the latest ones.

Queue - This data structure is used for CPU task scheduling, serving classes on a shared resources, and linear scheduling. Also asked commonly in interviews.

One day is not enough time to prepare usually, but if you go over these data structures over a course of 4-5 hours, you’d have a pretty decent base of the language you’ll be tested in.