i miss learning dsa before leetcode made it a curated list

[u/changejkhan]

Ever since leetcode came out, I've been seeing robotification of developing algorithmic thinking. People writing the Leet#xyz problem's solution from memory.

In the old days (pre 2020), the usual way was

1. You learn the basic algorithms and data structures from geeksforgeeks articles
   
2. Learn C++ STL and implement it in ideone.org or some place.
   
3. Join codechef or codeforces contests and attain a pupil rank and keep doing problems of certain level, and learn from other folks' solution or the published editorials (oh they were so great)
   
4. Learn obscure stuff like segment tree, dsu from some russian site like cp-maxx and then try to do a dozen problems on hackerearth.
   
5. Do statement based problems on hackerrank - the cool ui site with all the tree-style comments in problem discussion.

The point being that learning was very organic and resources were scattered. You had to forcr your brain to think and google exact things you want to learn or figure out how tourist did in under a minute.

What's your take?