Report an issue with this product or seller
While this book is meant for interview practice, I would recommend you still read it just for fun if you're into algorithms.
I've always believed that there's no "crack" to coding interviews; it's just a matter of whether you can code or not (well, at least at those sane companies not filling up school buses with golf balls). And that requires practice. Lots of practice. Which is why I spent all my free time working out problems on Hackerrank. For me, this went well . . . for a while.
But there comes a point at which you get stuck. I remember working on some hackerrank problems in the medium to hard difficulty which I would not be able to proceed for weeks and weeks. No amount of googling for information, discussion boards or stack overflow threads paint a complete picture to help you when you're stuck.
After countless such occasions and failing a few interviews, I gave in and bought this book. After all it was $20 - the cost of an uber to work.
Now, I wish I had bought this sooner!
Within reading the first two chapters I've already learnt so much about how to think about coding problems. There's also a nice collections of custom data structures at the end of the book. I've swiped some data structures straight out of this book and use them in my day-to-day life too.
Gayle has done a tremendous job of using words to explain how that weird gooey gel inside your head moves like when problem-solving. She deconstructs every approach to tackle a problem into atomic pieces. She goes into great depth about alternative designs, tradeoffs and runtime complexity. She talks about visualizing recursive calls as trees, thinking about BUD*, amortized analysis of ArrayList and much more. The great thing is that Gayle goes into copious amounts of details for each solution - she talks about how to start from a brute force solutions and optimize each component one-by-one and talks about tradeoffs in approaches.
Overall, I think this a very helpful book. I would recommend you begin reading this book immediately after your first course on Algorithms. It will certainly help drill down the concepts and help strengthen your fundamentals.
*BUD is a special term the author uses to describe strategies to optimize solutions
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
FREE delivery Tuesday, May 5 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35
FREE delivery Tuesday, May 5 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35
FREE delivery May 8 - 12
FREE delivery May 8 - 12
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Follow the author
Get new release updates & improved recommendations
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.
Customers also bought
Based on products customers bought together
-35% $25.79
List: $39.95
In Stock
Total price:
To see our price, add these items to your cart.
Choose items to buy together.
Deals on related products
Page 1 of 1Start over
Product Videos
About the author
Related products with free delivery on eligible orders
Sponsored | Try Prime for unlimited fast, free shipping
Page 1 of 1Start over
Customers say
Customers find this coding interview preparation book excellent, particularly for software engineers entering the field, with detailed explanations of advanced topics and useful information on algorithms. Moreover, the book is well-suited for beginners and techies, and customers consider it well worth the money. However, customers disagree on the book's readability, with some finding it user-friendly while others say it's difficult to follow. Additionally, the effectiveness receives mixed feedback, with some praising the solutions while others find them not perfect.
AI Generated from the text of customer reviews
Select to learn more
346 customers mention content, 327 positive, 19 negative
...Other than that great book. I passed my previous interviews with this book. Some questions are represented in a way how a live interviewer would ask....Read more
I’m sure this is a good book. However, you would think a book on software would have what language it is focused on readily available. It does not....Read more
Excellent book. Extremely thorough and detailed, but you can also apply one chapter at a time....Read more
Nice book helped me a lot in understand what industry seeks in skills that helped me understand us IT industry.Read more
166 customers mention interview preparation, 160 positive, 6 negative
This a great book for interview preparationRead more
Great interview prep! Covers exactly what you need to know.Read more
Perfect book for interview.Read more
This book is ideal for coding interviews / online judge sessions. Quickly helped recap Computation Thinking knowledge with clear examples.Read more
139 customers mention detailed, 124 positive, 15 negative
Very detailed and encyclopedic coverage of programming tasks. It would take months to work through them all....Read more
...Very practical and to the point, and very usable and readable for young adults and college students....Read more
Good book that has a wealth of knowledge to keep you up to speedRead more
...Very good introduction to the process of software engineering interview process.Read more
123 customers mention usefulness, 117 positive, 6 negative
Really helpful references and guides. Very useful, even after you land your first roleRead more
Indepth and useful for someone who is trying to learn the ways of interviewing. The book is almost as new- no complaints!Read more
...Overall, I think this a very helpful book. I would recommend you begin reading this book immediately after your first course on Algorithms....Read more
The content of this book are beyond great, great explanation and exercises....Read more
58 customers mention suitability for beginners, 55 positive, 3 negative
...to much to say, just that if you want to start studying it is a good book to startRead more
Difficulty level-Intermediate. Best for beginners.Read more
Has a lot of different types of interview questions. Great book for getting the practice and prep for technical coding interviews.Read more
Good book for coding enthusiasts.Read more
52 customers mention value for money, 44 positive, 8 negative
70 customers mention readability, 47 positive, 23 negative
It is a really good book, very well organized and easy to read. The writer is a genius!...Read more
...It is well-written, interesting and brilliant! This is really a must-have book for every developer!Read more
This book is very hard to follow. The author does a terrible job explaining the technical topics and does not provide useful insights.Read more
...CS fundamentals this books offers a refresher course and easy to follow examples.Read more
27 customers mention effectiveness, 16 positive, 11 negative
great for the price! worked well....Read more
...zero java experience and you only know Python, unfortunately, this book is useless. All the talking points and examples are on java....Read more
...Just a warning, this is a problem solving book. If you not interested in trying the problems you will not like this book.Read more
...Useless.Read more
Best book for Interview Prep
I bought the sixth edition within few days of release and it has been incredibly useful to practice interview questions. This new version has a bunch of hints for every question which you can use if you are stuck somewhere in the middle - very similar to a real interview. I found some of the tips quite helpful - like jumping directly to whiteboard only the function that is needed rather than writing every part of the class, using short alias for long words in the code etc. These tricks helped save time during white boarding questions. Also, the idea of first coming up with a brute force solution and then optimizing it from there, was quite helping Solving the questions in this book would tune your mind to get ready to face programming interviews. I would definitely recommend everyone to buy the book.
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews. Please reload the page.
Top reviews from other countries
-
Madson MarceloReviewed in Brazil on October 2, 2025
Livro muito bom, mas fui taxado
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase -
- VictorReviewed in Mexico on May 19, 2024
Amazing book and the code is very readable
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase - JustinReviewed in Canada on October 3, 2016
Changed the way I looked at a lot of problems
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
