I was practicing my algorithm and data structures on LeetCode when I ran into something intriguing about “If” statements. I had the following code:

for (let i =0; i<m; i++){
   for (let j =0; j<n; j++){
      if (matrix[i][j]%2 != 0) count++
   }
}

I was looping over every element in a 2D array and increasing the count if the value was odd. Quite simple, and in my head, I wanted to increase the count “if” a condition was true so I used the if statement. My solution worked and Leetcode gave me the following statistics:

• Runtime: 92 ms, beats 46.58…

While continuing my Udemy course on web development, I came across an interesting concept. The instructor explained an architectural decision he had made, he was going to use the CQRS pattern. The comments section was flooded. Why use that pattern? Why not use plain CRUD? Are there other alternatives? To address this, the instructor brought up the golden hammer anti-pattern which essentially says there isn't any one pattern that will work for everything.

The Golden Hammer? What Is It?

The golden hammer in software development is an anti-pattern. A common response or practice that is considered bad practice and is usually ineffective. …

I’ve been gaining confidence in my algorithm solving skills. So much so that I’ve graduated to the medium difficulty Leetcode problems. Yay! Can I effortlessly solve every problem I see? Hell no! I'm at the stage where given the problem I can normally come up with a working brute force solution. However, when it comes to finding the most optimized answer, I usually look for a few hints. But that's ok! …

A couple of weeks ago I had my first take-home coding challenge as part of the interview process for a company. I started researching take-home challenges to learn some tips and make sure I was following best practices. After I read some personal experiences of developers doing take-home challenges, I realized I had no idea how controversial this topic is! I came across many blogs and Reddit posts of people who are completely against them on principle and others where people defended it as the best way to determine a candidate's abilities.

What Is It?

A take-home assessment, challenge, or assignment is a…

It's such a joyous feeling when you finally get your solution to an algorithm to work. Or when your web application correctly works the way you want it to. But then… someone asks the questions “but what if I tried to do this?”, “what would happen if we change this”, “how does your solution handle this?”

Edge cases are the worst!

What is an Edge Case?

An edge case (or sometimes called boundary case) is a problem that occurs at the extremes of your operating parameters. To expand that definition to explain how it's normally used in tech, an edge case is a situation (might…

While going about my algorithm practice, I came across an interesting concept that I definitely wish I had seen earlier. I knew about pointers, and how having two pointers can sometimes help you solve a problem; basically keeping track of where you are in a linked list, or array, or graph but at two different locations. However, I had only ever used them to start at different parts of the data structure, or by keeping one static while one of them moved. I have never considered moving them at different speeds! …

This week I was building out a web service. I wanted to implement a specific algorithm as part of the service, but I am a strong believer in “don't reinvent the wheel”. Surely the piece of code I needed existed somewhere and I just had to find it. So I scoured the internet and to my disappointment, I was only able to find an implementation of the algorithm in a different language. I found a Javascript implementation, however, my web service was being built on a Ruby framework. Then this got me thinking about translating or converting code between languages.

Translating

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When it comes to practicing data structures and algorithms, I often find myself avoiding recursion. Recursion is not my favorite and it's definitely not a strong point. But we have to practice to get better, so I’ve been doing just that.

Recursion is a repetitive process in which a function calls itself.

In recursion, you will see the function calling itself inside the function. To write a recursive solution to a problem, you need these two steps:

1. Design the base case that will stop the function from calling itself
2. Design the procedure where the function will call itself (possibly with…