DSA Interview Prep
A personal study log of DSA interview prep, tutored by Claude. Each lesson covers a topic through concept explanation, hands-on implementation, and classic interview problems.
Lessons
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Lesson 1: Diagnostic Assessment
Eight classic interview problems across heaps, graphs, DP, and data structure design — used to identify gaps before building a study plan. Result: strong first-principles reasoning, weak pattern recognition.
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Lesson 2: Heaps
Heap internals (array representation, sift-up/down, O(n) heapify) plus a generic TypeScript implementation. Applied to Meeting Rooms II and Find Median from Data Stream, with a lightning round to calibrate heap vs. heap-adjacent patterns.
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Lesson 3: BFS and DFS on Graphs and Grids
Covered BFS (queue) and DFS (recursion/stack) traversal patterns on graphs and grids. Key takeaway: BFS guarantees shortest path in unweighted graphs because distance from source equals level depth; mark nodes visited on enqueue, not dequeue.