Show HN: I couldn't afford interview prep, so I built a free alternative

ccdnsteve about 4 hours ago 41 commentsRead Article on learningto.co

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Discussion (41 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

dayvid•about 3 hours ago

A Neetcode or Leetcode subscription is one of the highest ROI things you can buy

Aurornis•about 2 hours ago

The free version of LeetCode is more than enough to prepare for standard interviews.

Only mentioning this because I’ve seen some people stall their interview prep because they wanted to delay a LeetCode purchase until they felt they had enough time to prepare. You can get started right away with the free version.

Paid version is actually worth it (in ROI terms) but you can wait until later to buy it.

Starting is the most important part.

danielrmay•about 2 hours ago

Ten years ago, maybe

noident•about 2 hours ago

I haven't job hunted in five years or so, but leetcode was omnipresent in my local market. I got some offers without leetcode but those jobs paid about half as much as the ones that required leetcoding.

What does prep look like now?

drstewart•about 3 hours ago

I resisted getting one out of principle till I realised this. Landed a job at FANG ~7 years ago after doing so and that $30 subscription has probably paid for itself 20,000x over at this point.

andai•about 3 hours ago

What is the principle?

rfgplk•about 3 hours ago

Why would the subscription matter if you're not even getting interviews? The only relevant metric is your personal network, everything else is done.

Aurornis•about 2 hours ago

Even referrals have to go through the interview process at every company I’ve ever worked for.

A lot of referrals would not make it past interviews because they thought they were going to be handed the job without question and came unprepared.

dayvid•about 2 hours ago

I currently work at a FAANG and applied through the normal site. I didn't apply for years until I attended a Google event and a recruiter just told me to apply on the website.

pelagicAustral•about 3 hours ago

I like the look of the app... I just wonder if leetcode interviews are even a thing anymore...

cdnsteve•about 3 hours ago

Thanks for the feedback. Part of the thinking in building this depends on the company but bigger companies are still running DS&A rounds on basically every loop. This was built because the interviews that remain are still high stakes and the prep material hasn't really evolved since the green book era.

mandeepj•about 2 hours ago

You can practice across ChatGPT/Gemini/Claude; once you hit the limits on one model, move to the next. Don't need to buy a subscription to Neet/Leet if you don't want to.

elephanlemon•about 3 hours ago

Are leetcode interviews still a thing in 2026?

vovavili•about 3 hours ago

Nebius hit me with two LeetCodes, communicated a third round of system design and instead did a third round of LeetCode. It's very much a thing for companies worth applying for, especially if internal communication gets messy.

rfgplk•about 2 hours ago

Any company still doing them is wasting their time. I can show up hungover and half asleep with an Astra/Fable subscription and ace any leetcode problem with zero difficulty.

Aurornis•about 2 hours ago

Final round interviews are moving on site at many companies to prevent this type of cheating.

Still important to understand how to code. If companies wanted someone who believed their job was to type prompts into Astra, they could hire interns. Or not hire any engineers at all, just have another agent talk directly to stakeholders.

ericmcer•about 2 hours ago

Yeah I just scheduled a technical and they told me it would be leetcode style.

The company I interviewed for directly before was AI only, just prompt and review no coding allowed.

Fun time to prep

seki285•about 2 hours ago

Only for suckers

nsxwolf•about 3 hours ago

Expedia was about to Leetcode me but I took another offer before it happened.

pelagicAustral•about 2 hours ago

Nice! death to leetcode.

addandsubtract•about 2 hours ago

Light mode doesn't change the backgrounds of the text cells, making the text in them impossible to read.

cdnsteve•about 2 hours ago

You're right, just pushed a fix. A refactor earlier today had broken accent tinted backgrounds across a few spots in light mode. Thanks for reporting.

desireco42•about 3 hours ago

I don't need this but this looks very cool. I love neon colors and everything.

Some of these we, dynamic programming is something we didn't do at university and few years ago I did a course to learn it. It is good to know, wish we dealt with more of such intellectual problems at work, but as we all know this is not the case.

Anyhow, really cool.

askl•about 3 hours ago

Isn't it just the default slopcoded website design?

rvz•about 3 hours ago

Yes. It is the clearest giveaway of a complete slop style site.

cdnsteve•about 3 hours ago

Working on making light mode, I'm more of a dark mode guy myself but I get it. Should be fixed shortly. MVPs don't give me time for much of a stylistic polish at this point.

fourside•about 3 hours ago

Yeah and it’s buggy on mobile

cdnsteve•about 3 hours ago

Thanks for the feedback!

1270018080•about 2 hours ago

Leetcode seems so pointless in the AI era. It was already pretty pointless but there’s nothing to it now.

cdnsteve•about 2 hours ago

Most companies still run these rounds. AI is generally banned during them, though some places are experimenting with allowing it. They want to see your foundational knowledge, not what a copilot can write.

nsxwolf•about 2 hours ago

I’ve never seen Leetcode test foundational knowledge. There are far better ways to do that than timed puzzles.

esafak•about 3 hours ago

You couldn't afford a used book but can afford the tokens? No decent library around either? Okay, boss...

nsxwolf•about 3 hours ago

What books? That horrible green book?

nayuki•about 2 hours ago

CLRS is a wonderful book and I learned a ton from it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Algorithms , https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~akroit/math/compsci/Cormen%20Intro...

xgulfie•about 3 hours ago

why would you go read a book, it wouldn't even make the HN front page

cdnsteve•about 3 hours ago

lol, books don't give you that fresh MVP build feel

dominotw•about 3 hours ago

you dont need Clickbait youtube title lies on HN.

Hate these so much.

andai•about 3 hours ago

What would you have titled it?