1. What you need to know

MUST-HAVE KNOWLEDGE

data structures:

linked lists

tree, tries&graphs

stacks&queues

heaps

arraylists

hash tables

algorithms:

breadth-first search

depth-first search

binary search

merge sort

quick sort

concepts:

bit manipulation

memory(stack vs heap)

recursion

dynamic programming

Big O Time & Space

2. Walking through a problem

1.Listen (pay very close attention to any information in the problem description)

2.Example (special case)

3.Brute force (a naïve algorithm and its runtime), then optimize(do not code)

4.Optimize (use BUD optimization-bottlenecks/unnecessary work/duplicated work)

•  Look for any unused info
• Solve it manually
• Solve it and then think about why the algorithm fails
•  Make a time & space tradeoff

5.Walk through your approach in detail

6.Implement (write beautiful code)

7.Test, test in this order: (find bugs and fix them)

•  Conceptual test
• Unusual & non-standard code
• Hot spots, like arithmetic and null nodes
• Small test cases
• Special cases and edge cases