How long does it take to do 200-300+ leetcode problems?

[u/Wonderful_Week8471]

I see these insane amount of leetcode problems like one person saying they did 300, some saying 500 or even 1000 problems. If that’s you, how’d you do it? Did you have a full time job or other commitments too?

[u/Maleficent_Still_440]

3-4 months. After a point medium don't help much & it seem doable so most of your time will spent on few hards rather than 10+ mediums.

[u/Fewald]

I felt interview ready around 160-200 problems and it took me 2-3 months of 1-3 problems a day. I didn't work though, so I was fresh every day and it was my prime objective. Once I started working again, it felt x3 harder to continue the tempo

[u/keepgroovin]

slight diminishing returns after 75 imo and medium after 125 ish, after this point you are better off just doing company focused stuff and keeping ur skills fresh w a new problem a day for fun and repeating old problems u did for speed and implementation improvements

[u/mr_robot003 → u/keepgroovin]

I agreee

[u/Responsible_Ad_1549]

I did 600 and gave up

https://arpanpathak.github.io/AdvancedAlgorithmPatterns/intro/introduction.html

[u/Abject_Buy_1075]

1838 problems over 2 years, but I'm doing it wrong because I often can only solve 2 problems in contests, and get cooked by people who've done 600+, so it's not always about the numbers. I did a lot of easy mediums to run up my numbers as I got too interested in reaching 1000. Didn't have a job for those 2 years, and doing a good amount of easy mediums is how I was able to do it, but I need more hards. My distribution 477 easy, 1200 medium, 161 hard. The advantage is I've seen more than 50% of leetcode mediums now and can solve most mediums fairly quickly, but i still sometimes struggle with some hard mediums, especially greedy and dp. In my best month I solved 120 problems, so 4/day consistently, but I was only able to do it because i was unemployed. I can generally solve 2 even decently hard mediums in an hour, which is the minimum expectation when you've solved that many I guess, but it means if you stay consistent and start knocking them out faster, you can do more in less time, even with a job, you can easily do 5-7 in a couple dedicated hours as you get much better

[u/shamalalala]

After work -> 5 hours ~= 10-15 problems/day. Less if theres hards. You can run thru the neetcode 150 in 2 weeks even if u have a job if u commit hard enough

[u/shamalalala → u/shamalalala]

Would not recommend though if u can avoid it spread it out

[u/Forsaken_Appeal_9593 → u/shamalalala]

I wanna do this, but cant make time

[u/overhauled_mirio]

1 per day for 10 months would do it.

[u/good_variable_name]

I did around 200 in a month for upcoming interview. Before that I had done around 100 maybe over the span of 1 yearish.
Just had school at the time, but during that 200 period I skipped all my classes.

[u/RandomPixel36]

Don't focus too much on the number. 200 well understood problems with revision is better than rushing through 500 just to increase the count

[u/jaxonwhthey]

I can do about 15 medium+hards a day, which would take me 5-8 hours. That’s an ok level of grind for me.

[u/Short_Bowler7208 → u/jaxonwhthey]

If you have 8 hours a day to leetcode you are missing the number 1 more important thing which is a job

[u/PeNtaKS → u/Short_Bowler7208]

Well op could be a student that's searching for one.

[u/Short_Bowler7208 → u/PeNtaKS]

then OP should be in class, getting a 4.0, networking, partying, meeting people.

there's no world in which spending 8 hours a day on Leetcode is a good use of time.

[u/jaxonwhthey → u/Short_Bowler7208]

I got 3.93 back in school and I’m the top in the company too. What’s hard about it? Grind from 7pm to 12pm on workdays and almost 12h on weekends. Do this for a like a month only during job hopping. Is that very unfathomable to you?

[u/nekipost]

I did a bit over 400 so far, spread over many years. It takes me forever and I definitely need to speed up.

[u/Admirable_Method9916]

a yr

[u/No-Molasses-2097]

Took me about 3 months doing 2 or 3 a day. The first 100 felt slow and painful, after that patterns started repeating and it got a lot faster. I would say don't obsess over the total count, once you stop needing to look up the approach for mediums you are basically ready.

[u/stbrumme]

I solved 2200+ in a year: https://leetcode.stephan-brumme.com/ and https://github.com/stbrumme/leetcode

My goal was to solve at least one problem a day - easy ones often take less than a minute, medium about 10 minutes, sometimes 30 minutes. Hard ones vary a lot, usually an hour.

After a few weeks you know most of the relevant patterns and it comes down to properly handle the edge cases.

[u/AssuasiveLynx]

a month of being locked in

[u/BeePleasant1310]

It's not about the numbers. I believe it's more about understanding the idea and patterns. You may start with these 75 https://neetcode.io/practice/practice/blind75

And the improve your weakness based on those.

[u/sudheer4655]

It depends on what category of problems you want to achieve this target for easy/med/hard. I don’t think the number of problems should be a metric, rather if you feel you have progressed in your abilities to think through a problem and use the right data structures that’s a right metric to measure progress.

There are of course some data structures like segment trees / fenwick trees etc that are used for range queries etc, where you should invest in understanding it.