Are competitive coding sites a waste of time? Leetcode vs HackerRank vs Code Wars

competitive coding sites are they a waste of time today's topic on the real tough candy live stream back on track it's another live happy Easter to everyone hope you're doing well on this Sunday we already have an audience at the door ready to come in and speak their piece on this topic this is a kind of a controversial one hacker rank code wars leak code there are many others and actually working on an article for I have like 11 hacker rank alternatives because apparently that's a thing that a lot of people want are these a waste of time though getting the points solving algorithm this algorithm algorithm after algorithm going for the gold and trying to land that Google interview do these sites even help are they are they helping juniors we're gonna do a roll call and we're gonna talk all about it hope you're doing well today before a roll call I just got to plug this no mood was singing that limp Biskit song before the live I did it all for the JavaScript what stickers of course we've got you're all all-around classic model the hacker hoodie available in many colors we also have t-shirts what coders wardrobe would be complete without the classic heather gray lots of designs last I've even I even have leotards for the leotard where in your life over at candy script which mighty spring store our Mod para doodly-doo is gonna pop that link right about now thank you period doodlee for being an awesome mod para Dooley has really been rocking it lately so shout out to her she's on her third week of learning how to code and she's learning all the terminology and all about the coder lifestyle the developer lifestyle through the chat whoa look at all these comments Michael Coren balloon what is going on we have another mod with Michael Donovan is here hey Donovan Mohammed what is going on double row Mina hello Alex pop Kate dodged Sundeep how are you para doodly in the chat xavier says hyper relevant to me now thanks RTC furloughed last Monday and on the NYC job market now so this will give perspective I'm sorry to hear that lots of yeah not good right now for a lot of people as far as the furloughs and the layoffs so I wish you the best who else is in the check no Vaughn how's it going Gabriela Wow a lot of people here thanks for tuning in we're gonna get to it I have to give a shout-out to Sammy Turner though Sammy is the latest patron over at patreon.com slash real tough candy thank you so much Sammy for your support you have joined a great group of people who have contributed financially to keep this channel moving forward and helping people level up on their coding journey alright without further ado our competitive coding sites worth it are they a waste of time if you're an aspiring or junior developer for most of us these are gonna be a waste of time here's why interview prep is a cottage industry and it's very lucrative we have a lot of people with their sites on Google Facebook Amazon Apple other Fortune 50s fortune even for tourists like fortune 500 are these huge companies but mostly the things there's a lot of buzz around that there's a lot of money in that this book cracking the coding interview which is pretty much a book version of hacker rank it's a book version of leet code and it is a Java version of code worse this book is searched over 40,000 times a month on Google according to my SEO tools and these are paid tools these aren't paid ly just side of the road tools like I pay money for this stuff to research and do competitive analysis and do all this other SEO research this book is is searched 40,000 times online just on Google there's a lot of money to be made in these prep materials the reality is most junior developer Google doesn't hire juniors just blanket statement there they're teeny tiny exceptions if you graduated from an Ivy League university and show exceptional promise in the coding interview you may have a chance but for for most of us for the general that for the general coding population Google and Amazon and those tier the Fang tier they're not hiring juniors and the thing is with these sites they really emphasize that these questions are plucked from the fangs again if fang fa ang Facebook Amazon Apple Netflix Google throw in Microsoft probably throw in github throw in some startups who are copying Google but that's what the thing is the Fang tier and we have had we've seen more and more over the years these startups copy this interview style of coding challenges from Google from Amazon from the fangs so this does cater to a very small segment of employers the vast majority of us even for those of us who do a dream of working out of Fang and I'm not I am absolutely Pro employment if you have your sights set on a kind of working at Google I'm all about it totally like I am not anti algorithm I'm not anti Google or anything like that like wherever people want to work I support that but we also have to be realistic about their hiring practices it's good to have dreams but in order for that dream to be a goal it has to be realistic and when you sink a lot of time into these sites leak code hacker rank where they're providing problems from certain job from certain companies that's an opportunity cost and that's something I talked about I'm in the video I did a few months ago called cracking the coding interview para doodlee if people want to check that video out I won't rehash the whole thing but basically what I was saying is stuff like this these interview prep sites are great for people who were have their eyes on a thing but for most juniors and for most aspiring developers heck even a lot of mid-level and seniors their real time sink in it there's a there's an opportunity cost there and that is the real problem these sites do have value and in fact I'm signed up like I registered with hacker ranked um I don't have a verified account with leak code we're gonna go over some of these problems there's a really interesting article here we're going to check out real soon this person did 600 lead code problems in one year and then he published all of these he published his article and he has all these graphs and all these different visualizations and stuff we'll check that out in just a minute but there is such an opportunity cost for most of us when we're doing these things and I want to point out just how ridiculous this can get we're gonna go to code Wars no code Wars is one of those I think it's kind of a cool site they do these things called kata and they have one of the things I do think is really cool about this site is that they're additional languages are out of this world they have they have stuff that's so obscure like they have your your Biggie's they have Python JavaScript and all this even Kotlin but julia pure script prologue fortran doing challenges and those kinds of like visual basic they have they have one for vb so but i just want to illustrate like this is the mindset that some of these prep sites are coming from there they're coming from a certain angle let's go to javascript so i couldn't even if I wanted to join this is what it showed me to join you must root first prove your skills choose your language to begin let's do javascript now I can't even join the site until I prove my worth by solving this problem right so the question is the or the the state the problem statement is the code does not execute properly try to figure out why now some of us probably know answer to this I could probably do a little console dot log action up here and then return any times B but let's say I didn't know how to solve this what's the first thing you do when you don't know how to solve a trivial problem in coding your mother for you can google it right like that is just what's so silly about this interview style to me is that while it is a filtering tool when we're on the job and we don't know how to figure something out that's trivial like the syntax for bootstrap or something we freaking google it so I don't have to I don't have to think about this for a half hour like uh you know of eight times B could I can I do a consult I don't know maybe I'll do another function and oh that some kind of paradigm look the answer is right here this is the most efficient way for me to solve a problem when I don't know the answer let's say let's say I just didn't know the answer look at that wait a minute come on we're ups wrong run one wrong one even still this is faster than me pulling my hair out thinking how do I solve this I think this is take this one out this is a complete copy paste job I said I thought nothing look at that and I passed and now I can sign up and this is the exact type of thing that we see in the Fang level interviews and the reason they can do this kind of stuff at the interview the reason they do this kind of stuff at the interview is because there's a lot of dolphins who will jump through that hoop you know what I'm saying they said do X Y Z there's gonna be a lot of people do an X Y Z and that way they can filter out more and more okay instead of doing X Y Z do X Y Z ABC and then that filters out more people and so that helps the company filter through all these candidates before your typical dev job if you're your first jobs going to be at a digital agency a wordpress shop any maja dotnet shop in the Midwest the vast majority of employers first of all I don't think a lot of where do I even want to go with this the vast majority of employers aren't looking for this kind of employee and so again for for some people these competitive coding sites with these algorithm with these algorithmic questions with these random coding challenges they do have value and that is if they have value number one if you just are bored and you want to do something with your time however if you're searching for a job that is at that point probably a time sink and probably an opera a huge opportunity cost because those two hours you spent cranking through lead code problems let's just check out some problems here then I'll go back to this blog post the two hours you spend cranking out problems ranging from the longest common prefix to valid parentheses to merge two sorted lists to oh my god rotating A to D matrix 90 degrees counterclockwise that's time you could have spent working on your portfolio last time you could have spent studying es6 and more practical things and that way you do hone your problem-solving process these sites don't teach you how to code they don't teach you how to problem-solve in fact for I think for a lot of us they might make the situation even worse because when we get frustrated with one of these trivial premies are all trivial and they're not really problems they're not unique problems because they've been solved literally millions of times before they're not novel so you can change your this is a playground for elite code and this is pretty rad right like in and of itself these coding playgrounds are pretty cool look at look at all these languages C++ Java Python Python 3c blah blah blah rust that's pretty cool PHP so this question this is the zig zag conversion quite a challenge on leaked code this is a medium problem and you have your little your little face book style metrics here 4,000 people plus are like yeah yours this problem sucks about 1500 people are like yeah this problem is great is that what I'm to interpret from these likes and dislikes or is that how many people failed it versus got it right I don't know but look at this this problem this problem has been attempted over a million times 1.2 million times now compare that how much you have to ask yourself how much am i learning from this if you're a junior or an aspiring developer you have to ask yourself the 45 minutes I spend trying to solve this I may feel some satisfaction I may crank through it I also might google it but how much more could you get out of your time if you were working on a personal project to put in your portfolio huge opportunity cost we have the solution here so yeah I mean you guys are getting my point right let's go to this let's go to this blog post I'll show you this guy who did 600 of these in a year and okay so this was posted just three days ago a lot of votes here so people are like yeah good for you 600 problems in one year whoop whoop so this is from leaked code central this is 26,000 views this is already blowing up this is what this guy says I wanted to share with you my progress in one year my first submission elite code was one year ago when I got an invitation to Google's phone interview my there Google my friend suggested I start solving the problems from leaked code since a majority of the problems will be similar to them I prepared for a month and a half and failed that interview after that I realized my level is not as good as needed and decided to solve more problems from leaked code initially I was planning to prepare one year one year one year and solve a thousand problems however I was able to solve only 600 problems first I start solving the easy problems then I switched to medium now only I am only solving medium and in the future I want to solve only the hard problem so here is his one of his many graphics in this article 51% of the leak code 600 problems he has not attempt he has not solved 24% were easy blah blah blah etc he spent here is his time he spent 231 hours in one year he solved 691 problems where 91 problems were from code forces and 600 from leak code so I can conclude that in average I solved six 91/2 31 three problems per hour from the figure below you can see the days that I spent in one year and submission intensity for each day so this guy's gangsta right like he spent a year doing this stuff he basically is saying right here he spent a lot of time in the last year over 1500 submissions in the last year preparing to pass an interview where I mean I'm not knocking this guy this is his dream at the same time but I wanted I want to stress the numbers here for most of us we are not gonna be working on Google for a first job and all of that time we could have been employed by now if we would have if we would have spent a year working on leaked code stuff working on a code forces stuff we could have already been employed we could have already been learning on the job and getting paid to learn problems in one hour look at all these charts this guy's miss guy's boss this is this is kind of boss hours of listing a theory thirty-eight he know it's so sad this is a problem created by the fangs this person has invested hundreds thousands of hours total not just in the last year in total of his life just trying to get through the doors of Google he can never have that time back oh my gosh and all these charts but here's the interesting part I love the comments I win newspapers and different media outlets turn off the comments I know the story is really good and I'm surprised I actually there are so many interesting comments here I'm surprised that comments-section is still open so when I saw this I'm like mmm the comments section is still up and just give it a few hours give it a few days because this is this is a really interesting narrative from this person who submitted this this blog post so this guy says up here the top comment may now join an Intel agency great tracking skills now look at this I found this comment particularly interesting there's no doubt that leet code has made me a better programmer however I feel like the interview methods are just glorified general aptitude tests that really only tell you how strong someone's computer science background is rather than how good they are at the job they will be hired for being self-taught my computer software background is patchy or computer science sorry my computer science background is patchy on subjects that I've not had to tackle so I struggle on some of the problems after facing many interviews in the same vein as Google's infamous process and failing I recently interviewed with Walmart and the entire interview was tailored to the skill set required of the job which I crushed with no problem at all I write simple while algorithms was async/await to demonstrate my understanding of the main problem they had given me and the tech interviewers were pleased with my approach I was notified immediately that I was the top candidate and in one week's time they extended me the job offer don't be discouraged by employers like Google and these trendy little startups that copy their approach there are companies out there that will hire you for your real-world skills and will pay you top dollar I I mean he said it you know he said it this person said wow I'm amazed at the amount of hateful comments interview prep varies from person to person and that's a great point too it does vary from person to person we had an amazingly talented group a duo on the other day on the live loose an an Adam oh my gosh they are just that was one of the best live streams that was one of the best in funnest videos I've ever been a part of and they were focusing on a specific type of interview when we did the mock interviews with Carlos and Michael when loosin was on the first time that was a certain type of technical interview that's one type there is the possibility that your employer will engage in that interview there's also a big possibility that they won't so for my newbies for my aspiring devs one of the best things you can do is plan for your future I know that's no one could tell me that a few years ago like yeah thanks for the thanks for the support loser like don't tell me what to do if you plan for your future you you start your mind starts working in ways even when you're not thinking it's non cerebral and you get these ideas in your head and you start visualizing where you want to be and then you start thinking about you know I don't think I want to work for a company that uses PHP or I I don't think I want to work for a digital agency or maybe you do want to work for a digital agency and that really lets you prepare when you find out what when you discover what type of employer you want to work for that really helps you prepare and for some of us for a sliver of us this book is a godsend I mean this book this is a really good freaking book it has so much information like real-world info on the hiring process for Microsoft Google the things this is this is a 700 page encyclopedia this is the Bible of coding interview prep and it's a great fricking book but it's totally impractical for most of us let's go to the comments I've been babbling long enough 83 people in the chat eight if you're enjoying this video give me a little love with the like button please it helps me make more videos like this let's go to the comments hey Sarah how's it going good seeing you here she says people in my boot camp thought they were gonna be in camp for 12 weeks then get out and go straight to Google or some top company but no one could solve the morning algorithm problems yeah and you know that's a good point because people may see this video and think wow you're a rube you don't encourage people to go solve these problems look it's on the record data structures and algorithms are of critical importance so don't get it twisted data structures and algorithms are the crux the core of what we do no data structures and algorithms no internet no no web-based applicant of it none of it no pcs no laptops none of it data structures and algorithms are about most importance the way we learn them and the way we apply them varies and sites like hacker rank and leak code are one of those variations of that theme so that is a good I'm glad Sarah mentioned that like the morning algorithms most of us most of us do have a problem with data structures and algorithms because they're difficult right they're not something that we engage in daily like we don't write algorithms until we start until we start learning computer science and start playing with this stuff and building projects and stuff it's not something we do when we make breakfast you know Michael Kornblum says I'd rather create tools that other devs find useful pop Kay dodge says honestly I'd rather work for a financial company than Fang a lot of those financial companies are pretty they they who Wells Fargo there is a list of people there there is a list of employers here and I saw a few financial I'm not trying to scare you this isn't like beware I'm just saying the bigger the bigger financial company is a lot of times they do use stuff like lead coding you can actually which site is it is it hacker rank on hacker rank I think employers can also sign up for fees like all this stuff on act all the stuff on hacker rank for users for students or whatever you want to call this it's free like all this stuff free of charge but employers can also come on and see they can see your score and I think they can contact you or you can you can apply to them if you will you pass there they're metrics or something or reach their ideal metrics I don't know I haven't made it too far in Hecker rank I just have been exploring it because I don't have dreams or working out of thing this this is not stuff I use on a daily basis when I'm working when I'm doing software development it's not my my segment you know if it was yeah I'd probably be doing regex exercises but when I do need to use regex when I do need to compute something or solve a problem I'm usually googling it and I'm usually not building things from scratch because we have libraries and frameworks that have already solved these problems let's go to the comments thank you for showing some love in the likes people great seeing you sucka Java says I wouldn't recommend grinding leak code for your first job I would recommend getting real-world software engineer experience before trying it that's an option too the thing with these sites also is that they're really popular with like what are some with like twitch I've seen some twitch streamers do these also on YouTube and they're fun right like they can be fun entertainment especially watching other people grind through them but then some of us are thinking well all these people aren't working on code Wars and doing these Coty's and stuff maybe should I do these I mean absolutely explore him but as far as getting to like just like hacking through it getting some on-the-job experience is probably gonna help you a lot more because you're going to have a better problem solving process and you know that thing I just like we were looking at on code Wars they gave me a challenge before I could sign up but the challenge is so he is so ubiquitous that I could just google it and get the answer in half a second and it really electricity follows the path of least resistance I'm not gonna spend a half hour trying to figure out a problem if I can just google it and get the thumbs up and get the point you know let's go to these comments lots of new people here AFC one two three says there only on until you get stuck my good cord says man I was out of practice my kato's during the loosened interview Michael I'm so glad you came on for that that interview that was such I just had a great time with that and I think a lot of people really enjoyed it because we don't see a lot of that type of content on youtube or any other video platform para doodly-doo share the link so for those of you who missed it about two weeks ago maybe three weeks ago we did a video where a an experienced interviewer and engineer did a technical interview with two real-world with two real junior junior developers Michael Kornblum was one of them and Carlos was the other and it was probably like an hour maybe hour and a half but but we're in the coder pad and you can see them working through these solutions working through these problems they collaborated to solve some of the problem it was a really interesting interview and we also had some follow-ups so mark is the one says I'll do I only do that to post on YouTube and get some views probably labeling how much did I suck on online tests and post a knife nice thing face Julio says these are fun and all but I'm not a fan of this interview style because you learn to be good at these types of problems but it doesn't teach you how to actually build or maintain projects yeah and I'm curious I wish I could find a Google interviewer I've been trying to get I've been trying to expand my claws and get into these secrets of some of these things or at least you know the well-known secrets that needs to be advertised a little more I want to talk more about these people and like maybe get into their minds if they're able to talk about it I'm not even sure but instead of instead of me just being like well according to their website a B and C like I want to hear it from the babes mouth you know I want to hear what they really have to say about their interview process and the rationale behind it that would be awesome by the way I'm getting a DevOps person to come on the channel we're going to talk about DevOps everything you wanted to know pretty excited for that one - I saw Candace was here Kanda is what's going on a pharmaceutical company that focuses on AI didn't ask any lead code problems they were more focused on my experience and some AI and machine learning right and that is that I mean that has almost the typical interview for most of us employers want to know they're gonna be hiring someone who knows how to solve their problems that's it but because everyone and their little sister wants to work at Google they put in these roadblocks this dude spent many hours of his life because he has a dream of working at Google and I hope he gets it like I seriously with his grind and if you know he has the other skills if he has the soft skills the communication the problem-solving I hope he I hope he achieves his dream and he and he can you certainly can but it is such a tear if you're just using the coding test alone to measure someone's capabilities on the job I think that employer might be in for a rude awakening but Google and the things they do lots of rounds of interviews there they're extracting as much as they can about you for their purposes let's check this out this is an article written by an employer I believe for this was a secondhand account perhaps I didn't read the whole thing this was published on LinkedIn it's called beware of hacker rank I'm not gonna read this entire thing but just just to give you a flavor of the varying of how people think about these types of interviews in these types of interview prep sites because there are some sites some of us do enjoy competitive coding and I think that is much different than a site like hacker rank because hacker rank has the employer element built into it competitive coding usually doesn't there usually you know soda and pizza type of events or these obscure websites you haven't heard of loose communities of people just hacking through or competing for 500 bucks or whatever competitive coding is something that a lot of people enjoy and they do it's like a sport you know or like fantasy football or something they're putting their skills on display and they're moving up in ranks to claim the title of bomb coder but this is just another variation because it is competitive like hacker rank is competitive leet code is competitive because you do get points like I think they gave me points just for signing the frig up they gave you points I got a leap coin reward for uploading an avatar plus five I also got ten lead cones for connecting my github like seriously and they have contests here too but they also the way they make their money a lot of these platforms hacker rankly code is by the employers and I'm not sure if it's leak code or hacker rank but the employer can actually give out coding challenges too they can do remote interviews I think it might be hacker rank let me go to the home page here once you sign up as a student or coder they don't let you access the employer side of things but I'm pretty sure it is hacker rank yeah because the hacker ranks totally free for us but for employers it's you got to come up that money and they give you they give the employer coding interview environments for for virtual interviews now let's go back to this beware of hacker rank Richard says a colleague of mine recently told me that he was testing potential candidates using hacker rank and asked that I give his test to go why not I thought I've hired a lot of developers and I had been coding for a long time and if you see sharp since 2001 it should be simple you can imagine I was a little miffed when my colleague forwarded my results to find I had scored a pathetic 53 out of 105 so at the time of the publication at the time of this articles publication this dude had been coding and c-sharp for 14 years 14 years any god of 53 out of 105 oh I wouldn't even bother interviewing you with that score my colleague happily announced after the initial oh no I'm rubbish had worn off and bruised my ego had recovered I took a look at the results to see we're had gone so badly wrong the tests comprised of nine questions seven which were multi choice multiple choice and two actual coding problems the multiple the multi choice questions were truly awful they consisted of a question along the lines of which of these are valid c-sharp and then five snippets of code that can't be copied from the site so you are effectively playing spell checker the errors in the code were along the lines of missing semicolons or dropped method modifiers in my entire development life I can't imagine a situation where it would have been an advantage having someone on my team that can spot a line a code that an IDE would balk at before I even press compile exactly exactly and he says let me make this 100% clear that kind of testing is pointless I do not need developers who can successfully code notepad I need creative thinkers this is the same as criticizing JK Rowling skill at storytelling due to her prowess at spelling ie pointless fortunately these questions carried five marks each so this guy's this guy's miffed right here's how he failed as with most development problems the question had a number of possible solutions their scoring system was utilizing eleven test cases to assess your solution there was no indication of scores being attached to these tests I finished the test in 42 minutes the limit was 75 here's what he says here's the conclusion the Tal kind of dr my takeaway from all this is that hacker rank is a poor indicator of a developer's problem-solving capabilities and like so many of these things he's really only good at assessing one thing namely how good the candidate is at completing hacker rank tests I will not be using hacker rank to test any potential candidates I'm not recommending it if you want go developers need to assess other things are they creative do they write good clean solid code do they understand coding patterns can they work with other team members do they add to the team do they understand the trade-offs between speed and maintainability none of that can be found on hacker rank as with all things be careful what you measure for that is what you will get if you're looking for human spell kurz hacker rank is for you man this is a screen this guy is he owed hid he has he has been coding in C sharp for 14 years and he failed the hacker rank challenges this guy and there's 225 comments here we're not obviously gonna get through them all the top comment here is just how to grew some experience on hacker rank the first few tests went fine but from test 5 onwards it crashed with a segmentation fault yeah probably a probably a mix of comments here if if I had to guess because these sites are really divisive just say hacker rank and people are like yeah hacker ray did some people were like yeah hacker ranks uggs there really is no middle ground for a lot of a lot of developers and I understand why but there are I want to I want to be totally fair though for some of us these sites are a godsend if we are trying to jump if we are trying to transform into dolphins and pop through the Google hoop pop through the Amazon hoop if that's our dream these sites are awesome because before who really knew what they were gonna ask now we do by the way as I mentioned earlier I think this is a good book for people who for the segment it's a great book for the segment of people it's catered to it's written for para doodly-doo pop that link we just had a review go up a comprehensive review of this book we have sample we have bespoke photos bespoke bespoke photos on that article from this book we have a complete breakdown it's a huge article if you're wondering what this book is all about it's not going anywhere anytime soon it's on the sixth edition I'm sure she is working on the seventh to be released sometime in the near future no doubt no doubt about it great comments today everyone developers this room is an Lego AFC says it's boring as well like it's just a question or not actually doing something code with it yeah that's a great point to some of us enjoyed these challenges because they're just like bite sized Boop's all this all this solve this and it does get us going because it is competitive I consider myself a very I am a very competitive person like it's just it's just genetic and I so I can see the draw to this when your points are adding up you're going up the leaderboard you're like yes I got the question I am the coding goddess I can see how you get sucked into it because they are just like boom boom boom okay easy I got these Easy's yeah not go to mediums and you just get sucked into that pattern but as this person said was at ABC AFC AFC one two three said you can't do anything with them you can't build a project you certainly can't put these questions in a portfolio you certainly can't go to the JavaScript basic ten days of Java's well maybe ten days of JavaScript maybe I don't want to speak too soon here but going to the problem solving questions you can't put any of this stuff into a portfolio you can't put these 600 problems this guy did what does this person now as impressive as his study time is what does someone like this person have to really show for if he if he's taking a big risk he's taking a big risk because these types of things that he's studying are not applicable on the job and if he doesn't pass the Google interview all of this all of this was a 100% waste because you will never rotate A to D matrix 90 degrees clockwise on the job you'll just never do it it just isn't it just isn't it's total trivia and I mean this guy is taking a real risk that's why I say I hope he achieves his dream because if he doesn't it's uh it's gonna be I'd be in bed for months eating pizza not that I don't do that as is but I'm just saying that kind of thing is a life changer so here they're publishing different questions the last stone weight solution has been plug case so that's a solution I guess they're publishing solutions four days ago the number of sub matrices that sum to target solution has been published the best time to buy and sell stock three solution it just wow I'm the site this leaked code so hacker ranked braig's like seven using the site leak code has probably I don't remember the numbers this is a pretty popular site too there's also like coder chef the UX UI on that site is a little little 90s it's a little 90s but they have contests that's the other thing if you're interested in checking these sites out and you have the skills they do monthly contests or this one lead code does does weekly contests coder chef I think does monthly contests hacker rank not sure [Music] but there is money in being competitive right now hacker gennadiy is number one from Belarus he's has 2961 points and you can check out the different this is just kind of cool you can see the algorithm contests and different they have a ton of different contest math functional programming AI algorithms and stuff Jamie Shackleford with the dual super chat James sorry James I called you Jamie I can never get anyone's name right on this channel thank you for the super chat thanks for mentioning App Academy I love that site you're certainly welcome App Academy for those who are not aware they have a sister site called App Academy open and they have totally made free their in-person coding bootcamp curriculum and I know I've told the story so many times I waited a year to review site because I was expecting the worst most free stuff that I go over is not very good it doesn't make sense for me to review something for like 20 minutes or 1/2 hour if it sucks right like that's kind of disingenuous so I finally I finally looked at it and I was like this is actually really good if you're interested in getting the bootcamp curriculum it's the same one they use at their in-person boot camp it's I was impressed they have videos they teach data structures and algorithms some of the best videos I've seen on the free tier probably the best I've seen on the free tier for intro to data structures and algorithms check that out like I said it's open to everyone just just Google App Academy open and you can sign up it takes like a minute James Shackelford also what do you think of learning from code Academy well this is funny because code code Academy is they picked the worst number one they picked the worst name no one I think it's code Academy just like every time we talk about code CAD were like yeah what do you think of code Academy Co Academy code Academy whatever you want to call it it's good for beginners what I liked about it is that the basic stuffs free and also it was really easy to just start learning now when I was using it this was a couple years ago I didn't even have to sign up you could just click start using their interactive code editors and get to it and just rock and roll with it I think it has it's gonna it has a shelf life for the typical developer because their stuff is catered to it caters to beginners and once you hit that point you're just like okay this this isn't cutting it for the real basics I think it's great I actually I actually like code Academy but because it is it does focus on a very specific type of developer that is like an aspiring developer or a very new developer I don't talk about it all that much so you know and eventually you're gonna outgrow it that's maybe what I should say I think it's a good site but you're gonna probably outgrow it very quickly thanks for the super try good questions good comments King I thought you said Coke Zero he says code zero cold zero yes I liked Visual Studio better Java will have more legacy apps and also Spring Framework awesome freaking live chat people it is totally lit if you haven't subscribed to this channel and you are enjoying the topics that we talk about in these lives consider subscribing also consider hitting a like button if you haven't so we can continue to have these just absolutely engaging live streams still going through some comments here new people arriving we also have some people who have been here from the start shout-out to Candice one of my patreon supporters she is just she's doing it all she is living her best life recently earned her PhD in talks with Facebook about to interview I don't know Candice have you have you done that video interview with them yet but she's doing it all and we're all stuck in quarantine right now and she's still like some of some of you developers are absolutely freaking inspiring the days I don't want to do anything I'm like well my subscribers doing is like making the best life possible for themselves I should probably start taking taking a hint Chris Butler what's going on Kyler stew says it's a choice as a freelancer make actual money or bet that these will be worth the loss in hourly wage what are we talking we're talking about freelancing I got to get hip to this chat GTD how's it going thanks for your support thanks for your at patreon upgrade the other day I think the idea of the interview giving these questions is to see if the candidates have done their homework with them as well as thing as well if they know the Comp Sci fundamentals before getting into the abstract it also weeds out the slackers by the way working at Fang has been compared to living in a gilded cage yeah and you know it's funny you say that when we Google so like I said earlier in this video I'm not anti Google from an employment point of view ever I think there is a really perverse idea of the lifestyle at the fangs these are high stress areas these are high stress jobs these are high stress work environments what do we see what do we see when we type in a day in the life of a Google engineer a day in the life at whatever startup you know they've been around for 10 years but they're still called a startup what do we see we see cute dogs we see food we see people rocking the earbud this may be fake typing developers that is not the reality of these jobs they're very stressful there is a lot of pressure and if you're a creative thinker they're not looking for that they are they are they are a business they're doing a lot of crazy cool things but they need people to adhere to their standards so for people who love being creative it's it's usually not a good job it's usually not a good fit they're tough jobs some critiques of the fang's do get through and I don't know if it's a marketing budget that these things have to like push these types of oh this is the greatest job ever like people who want people I know in my network or who work at Google they work they're stressed not helped not all of them but it is a if you're making a quarter mil a year you're making $300,000 just like dude I love what I do but as far as just the standard of like buffet all-you-can-eat that is there's definitely a negative side to these companies as well if you're making like I said if you're making a quarter mil a year or more you have a lot of responsibilities and what those responsibilities comes a lot of stress so take up meditation and get that money James Shackelford I am reading a comment for the second time let's go down here and see Sarah back at it in the chat all day in a life of a dev are them eating working out taking a nap and eating again yeah I mean they're totally fake they're totally fake and that's not to throw shade on them as creators I don't know them you know they can they're getting their money they're doing their thing that's cool I'm just saying that that's it's a fantasy it's entertainment and I guess YouTube is a good platform for these types of videos because YouTube is an entertainment platform but they're just not real suburban black boy radio I just bought your resume udemy class I'm stoked to start and I'm not interested in working for a thing awesome I'm glad you purchased that and I hope I thank you for investing in that and I hope it serves you well 74 people in the chat right now thanks for joining us on this wonderful Sunday happy Easter to my peeps if you're interested in talking more about leaked code on these interview things we talked about it all the prime focus of this channel is to share and help people level up in an entertaining way yet we like to have fun of course we I'm all about the goofs but there is also a serious side to the channel and that's to help people just achieve their dreams and just level up maybe you don't have a dream right now that's totally fine too if you're not interested in leveling up we also provide a very robust community here on the live streams and in the discord para doodly-doo please pop that discord link for all to enjoy we're almost at a thousand members in our discord our little community we have a room for portfolios if you want to get some feedback on that unfortunately I don't I just I can't look over them all even though I'd love to maybe someday if I'm able to do this on a full-time basis I can help more people that way but we do have so many people there who are willing to help and share their knowledge it's just a really fun community we have a place where you can show your github we have a meme room a recipe room and so many others let's go to the comments Frank Joo popping in with that super chat thank you Frank for yours poor love your stuff RTC keep it up I appreciate that Frank some days I mean I have to be totally honest there are some days where I'm just like what is this even trying to even be making videos but then I get I get demons I get emails I get communication from all these developers from around the world I'm like yes this is a good thing let's keep rockin it there's really a big community element with this channel and that is one of my favorite parts about it it's what honestly keeps me doing these videos and it's not just about Queen RTC like preaching the gospel of software development because there are so many segments to it and everyone's feedback everyone's your messages that you share help me make better content and they just make things more interesting so para doodlee pop the discord Alex G says are these sites a good way of deepening your code knowledge and understanding forget about the money I think well I mean I have to be fair here there was a guy was it on leak code I don't know where it was that article we were reading where the guy solved 600 problems one of the people the guy who got hired at Walmart said it helped him become a better programmer that said there's a there are a lot of materials and a lot of resources that can help you become a better programmer what kind of program or do you want to be maybe start with that if your eyes are on Google your eyes are on Facebook get your butt get your butt to leak code and see what they're saying get your butt to cracking the coding interview and read the read the Google portion learn Java maybe this book this is the funniest part about this book is that nowhere is it noted that this entire thing with the exception of chapter 12 is written in Java it's like dude seriously chapter 12 is in C and C++ but it's like man I would love a seventh edition to have various languages but then it'd be it would be an encyclopedic series with a beautiful slipcase let's go to the comments here Michael Kornblum saying he will be throwing a voice chat after part on discord once the livestream adds yeah Michael Carr boobs rocking the vote the voice chat in the discord is totally underutilized but Michael is there holding the flame he's holding the torch in the voice chat and keeping people in good spirits shout out to Michael Kornblum and everyone work in retail right now shout out of course to our medical our medical community all around the world if you have someone in your family or a friend who's in medical right now text um it's right I'm a quick email or a long one and tell them thanks like they're rocking it right now people in retail are rocking it they're putting their health and lives in jeopardy so shout out to Sarah shout out to Michael and everyone else working retail right now to great comments in the freaking chat Ben Riley with the super chat thank you my friend hey can't stay long but I wanted to throw something your way plus when you interviewed Joshua fluke this Joshua fluke still do tech stuff I mean I'm interested in interviewing pretty much anyone if they can add value to the channel and further the goal of this channel which is to help people level up and and succeed in software development give me the status give me the status I mean I'll have anyone on the channel as long as it relates to the theme thanks for joining in thanks for the super chat yeah developers it's 6:35 and I think the message has been delivered on this channel are competitive coding sites a waste of time for many of us yes they're a huge opportunity cost that isn't to say you shouldn't explore them if you're interested I mean check them out but like anything though it's don't get hooked if your eyes aren't set on a faing I mean I want to note that there is a difference between purely competitive coding and a site like hacker rank which is deeply involved in connecting employers with developers with engineers who succeed with these types of problems for those of us seeking a fing role there are many different ways you can prep you don't have to use these they're some of the lot of these are free so that could be a good start there is also algo experts Clements new relatively new platform I think it's been around for like two years now one or two years recently published a review on that para do it early do you have that link it's a real tough candy calm or the algo expert review that's a cool platform he has like 60 hours of video where he explains step by step and it's a two part video where he gives a kind of a comprehensive overview of the challenge and then he shows you the implementation for the solute for that entire solution video and they're like 40 minute videos he has I was really impressed with that platform that was another one I'm just like yeah okay it's just another one in the mix but I think he's got a good thing going on para do really pop that link developers I want to thank you for tuning in shout out to James Frank and Ben for the super chat I hope you're having a wonderful Sunday we're gonna be doing these every night I'm gonna try to I always put that that disclaimer we're gonna try to do these every night until we hashtagged flatten your curves maybe some premieres thrown in but there's just so much to discuss and so much to do I'll see you later peace out have a good one

Channel: RealToughCandy

Views: 12,309

Rating: 4.2446809 out of 5

Keywords: codewars, leetcode, hackerrank, code wars, leetcode vs hackerrank, leetcode vs codewars, leetcode vs hackerrank vs codewars, competitive coding, web developer interview, software developer interview prep, algorithm challenges, is code wars worth it, is leetcode worth it, is hackerrank worth it

Id: VJqut0btMeY

Length: 56min 59sec (3419 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 12 2020