Hey LeetCoders 👋,

Dynamic Programming (DP) can be intimidating at first. I used to get stuck on even “medium” DP problems until I developed a systematic approach. Here’s what works for me:

🔑 My DP Strategy
- Understand the problem deeply 🔍 – Don’t rush. Identify states, choices, and constraints.
- Define subproblems 📝 – Ask: “What does the solution depend on?”
- Recursion first 🔄 – Solve recursively with memoization before jumping to iterative DP.
- Tabulation / Bottom-up 📊 – Convert recursion to iterative DP to save stack space.
- Optimize space 💾 – Many DP problems can be optimized from O(n²) → O(n) or O(1).
💡 Lessons Learned
- Start with small examples to find patterns.
- Don’t memorize formulas; understand why a recurrence works.
- Even similar DP problems can have subtle differences – read carefully!