Why I Like Grokking the Coding Interview

I recently tried Educative's Grokking the Coding Interview course in preparation for my upcoming interviews. Unlike LeetCode or Cracking the Coding Interview, it wasn't free. Old me would have had a hard time swallowing the $179 fee. He probably would have thought, why spend money on something you can get online for free?

Working through topics, not problems

Educative groups problems into sections like Sliding Window, Two Pointers, Two Heaps, Top 'K' Elements and provides 5-8 questions with each. They make it clear how these questions are related and build upon what the course had previously presented. This logical grouping helped me build a solid understanding of the topic that wasn't possible when I just did individual questions on LeetCode.

LeetCode has categories in their Explore tab, but they group them by data structures, which seemed less relevant. Still, I'm a fan of LeetCode's Recursion category. The grouping of problems there was good.

Consistent solutions

All the solutions on Educative feel like the same person wrote them. The explanation and code are always consistent. When I say Educative questions build upon what was previously shown, I mean some example solutions are the same as a previous question with two or three lines highlighted that made it different.

LeetCode, GeeksForGeeks, etc., can stay free because most of their answers are from the community. The community aspect also allows them to have a great selection of problems, but the solutions are never consistent and can be confusing.

Motivation

It's very satisfying to make progress on the course. You can see the percentage completed and get a green checkmark next to old questions. Simple but effective.