I’ve did something I rarely ever do. I paid for lifetime access to Neetcode.io. It happened one late night while I was browsing Youtube. I stumbled on a video that showed a person going through his Data Structures and Algorithms course and they really sold me on doing the same.
So far, I’m really loving it. I’m slowly progressing through it and so far, the Leetcode problems haven’t been too bad at all (especially since Neetcode has video solutions explaining every step of the way).
I used this opportunity to also kill 2 birds with one stone. You see, I haven’t really used Javascript in a really long time. Probably somewhere around 4 years if I had to guess. I was never a big fan of it. I used to be a “UI engineer” and then one day, backend work needed to be done with no one around to do it. So I stepped up and said that I’ll give it a shot (considering I barely knew any Java, I was a brave soul). Anyhow, my intuition tells me that it’s time. It’s time to brush up on it and get re-familiar. I’ve been feeling this for a long time and tried to find opportunities at work to jump back into the UI. Truth be told, it just does not spark joy for me.
Joy or no joy, sometimes, this is part of the job.
Anyways, I’ve been solving the problems using Javascript and that’s been fun. Learning (or re-learning) programming languages hasn’t really been too much of a challenge for me. They’re all sort of the same thing with a different syntax (at least the most common languages). So this first go around with Neetcode’s course, I’m going to use Javascript. Then I’ll go back and do it in Java maybe. And then another language. I don’t have a grand plan yet but that’s the high level plan.
Why solve Leetcode problems now? I have a steady job (for now). I can build large applications for many users. Why now?
Well my first answer is, why not?
My second answer is what else would I do?
My third? With all the tech layoffs, what if I get laid off?
My last reason is that data structures and algorithms is pretty fundamental to software engineering. I feel like just for my love of software engineering, this is a good thing to know and be very familiar with.