Greetings LeetCode community,

Here I’d like to share my journey of getting started with LeetCode, which began a little over five months ago. It’s been a challenging yet rewarding experience, and I hope this post might resonate with fellow beginners or inspire those exploring from scratch and wanna see how a beginner path might be.

The Beginning: A Chance Encounter

It all started in July when I went out for lunch with three seniors from my lab. During our casual conversation, they mentioned their careers. That very same day, I registered my account and began my LeetCode journey.

Early Days: All was a Struggle

To begin with, I only tackled the Daily Coding Challenge (DCC). My approach was rude and ugly—solving the problem while simultaneously looking up resources from multiple websites to understand the algorithms. Since I could only practice during my free time after the day, I often found myself stuck on a problem well into the early morning hours (sometimes even until 4 or 5 AM). My determination was high, but my efficiency was, admittedly, low.

The 3-Month Milestone: A Turning Point

After about three months of consistent practice, I started noticing some changes:

• Mental Framework: I began to develop a mental map of most problem topics, which helped me categorize problems and choose approaches more quickly.
• Situation Awareness and Skill Judgement: I started recognizing whether I had a reasonable chance of solving a problem on my own based on my current understanding. So I can set a rough time limit of about 1 hour for solving each DCC. And feel comfortable to go to discussions or learn from others' solutions if I judged that I couldn’t figure it out due to some lack of skills

This marked the start of a steady improvement in my problem-solving process.

Beyond 3 Months: Gaining Speed and Determination

From the third month onward (until now), I saw gradual progress in both speed and independent problem-solving:

• Easy problems: I could typically solve them within 10–20 minutes.
• Medium problems: These took me around 30–40 minutes on average.
• Hard problems: While still challenging, I began to solve some of them independently.

A memorable (and humbling) moment during this period was when I worked on a follow-up question late at night after completing the DCC. It turned out the test cases were trickier than I expected, and my acceptance rate on the account panel dropped by 2%. Feeling frustrated, I decided to temporarily pause LeetCode and focused on the upcoming paper deadline that day. Only after resubmitting the paper in the evening did I return to finish that problem—and, thankfully, I solved it.

Now: Reflecting on Growth and Looking Ahead

Fast forward to today, I feel like I’ve reached a saturation point in my learning curve:
The December DCC problems tend to be more beginner-friendly, so I’ve been enjoying them.

My account’s rank seems to have stabilized, and I no longer see dramatic fluctuations in my performance metrics.
Looking ahead, I’m considering new challenges, such as:

• Exploring Mock Assessments to simulate interview experiences.
• Trying my hand at Contests, where I’ll need to handle multiple problems under a strict time constraint.

Key Takeaways for Beginners
For those who are just starting out with LeetCode, here are some tips from my journey:

• Be Patient: It’s okay to struggle in the beginning. The effort will pay off as you build foundational knowledge.
• Set Limits: Feel free (and would be better) establishing a stop-loss time to avoid spending endless hours on a single problem. Learn from solutions if needed and admit that some skills are there wait for us to acquire.
• Consistency Matters: Even solving just one problem a day (like the DCC) can help you build long-term skills.
• Reflect and Adapt: Periodically review your progress and adjust your approach to improve efficiency.

Final Words

LeetCode has been an useful learning tool, helping me sharpen my problem-solving skills and gain confidence in tackling algorithmic challenges. While I still have plenty to learn, I’m excited about taking the next steps in this journey.

Thanks for reading, and good luck to everyone on your own coding adventures! If you have any advice for tackling Mock Assessments, Contests, or ways to sharpen one's skill for career and gaining jobs, I’d love to hear your thoughts!