Intermediate Algorithm Scripting Struggles

Occasionally, yes, but it’s not the norm for technical interviews, especially for junior dev positions. Anyone interviewing with that sort of material is no one you’d want to work for. I have given technical challenges to candidates before, but it was take-home material, not on-the-spot whiteboard quizzes.

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I am new to computer languages/science. I started the intermediate algorithm challenges and I was BARELY
able to finish two challenges in the past FOUR DAYS

In the beginning there were some clues… now I feel completely bare and lost… I am assuming this is the normal trend on a learning curve…

After learning so much form the Wikipedia Viewer, Weather API and Twitch TV my confidence was high; and now… I had the illusions that I thought I knew and now realize - I knew “not”…

Thanks for this post because sometimes I felt I was the only one…

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THANK YOU SO MUCH. I thought maybe I had missed something, or that it was a joke…

You should get used to researching, reading the documentation, StackOverflow, etc. In a real job there won’t be hints–just constraints.

So I’m struggling with the intermediate algorithms, but it’s more because I feel like I should be using some brilliant piece of code. Are these really more about just solving and having a working solution, or coding the most effective streamlined code? Some of these I could just for loop the heck out of, but that’s ugly and not overly effective…but it would solve the challenge.

The short answer is that it is about both. When your first starting out, just figuring out a working solution should be your focus. However once your more comfortable, you should go back and work on making your solutions more efficient. You would be surprised just how many of those algorithms can be solved in just one or two lines of good code.

Hackerrank is not very well designed, the developers don’t know English well (obvious by the poor/incomplete wording of some of the problems) and the way they pass data to your solution is a PITA most of the time. Even professionals don’t find hackerrank to be user friendly.

This is exactly the same problem I’m having - As a result I’ve diverted to other areas in web development. Its always good to take off your mind off the things that frustrate you once in a while and manifest your energies instead into another area where you’ll be more productive. Come back to the algorithms when you’ve cooled off a bit mentally and once you’re more fresh.

Good luck!

Hi all…

Ive just read this article and I really found myself in few if these responses LOL…

I ve been member on FCC for quite some time but I really got in to Javascript coding for the last 3 months… And let me tell you all the challenges until intermediate algorithmic challenges (IAC) were doable (as most of you guys already mentioned here) but when I got to this part it really started to be difficult…

I usually got 10 or even 20 challenges per day… But in IAC section I easily get stuck on a challenge for days… Right now I passed about 10 challenges in almost a month… and each challenge I pass I feel like king of the mountain :smiley: it’s really difficult especially for me as I wasn’t the greatest student of math and when it got to prime numbers and prime factorials I had to google out and watch lots of videos before I could actually work on the assignment to fully understand it. But what I really love about algorithmic scripting is that you have to use your brain on 110% to solve the task…

Anyway what I all wanted to share with you is that even if I get stuck on a task for days and it really drives me nuts( literally banging my head against the wall) … When I (or you guys) find the solution it’s the best feeling ever… Eventhough it’s not the perfect solution…

Some of you mentioned pen and paper as first step and this tip really helped me a lot as well :sunglasses:

So just to let you know I’m struggling a lot but I’m a fighter not willing to give up easily :grin::grin:

Also id like to mention Bruce Lee’s quote:

I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times

I am gonna be perfectly honest here, most of the days I do just fine, but there are days that a simple iterating array elements can get me so irritated I almost tear up my notes…

I think the reality is this, you will get frustrated, from time to time, but as long as you can keep coming back, and never let those feelings take control over you, you are on the right track.

Whenever I hit a invisible wall, or had to put a hiatus on coding cos I have other things going on in my life, I always, come back as soon as I am ready. It could be months, or days.

But I keep on coming back.

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The struggle is real… I can guess the methods I need, but just don’t know how to do it lol. Keep researching and reading tutorials/articles tho…