The Interview Prep Mistake That Kept Holding Me Back

Ujjwal — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 06:21:11 +0000

[While preparing for interviews, I realized I had a strange habit.

I would solve a problem, get stuck, open the solution, understand it, and move on feeling productive.

A few days later, I couldn’t solve a similar problem on my own.

The issue wasn’t lack of practice.

The issue was that I was consuming solutions faster than I was developing problem-solving skills.

So I changed my approach.

Instead of looking for answers, I started forcing myself to think longer, write down my ideas, identify where I was stuck, and only then seek guidance.

That worked much better.

But I couldn’t find a tool that supported this style of learning.

Most platforms either:

Give you the answer.
Give you the editorial.
Give you AI that writes the code for you.

So I started building my own.

The goal was simple:

An AI coach that guides the thought process instead of generating the solution.

Over time I added:

DSA practice
System Design preparation
Low-Level Design preparation
Company-wise interview questions
Topic-wise strength and weakness analysis
Personalized revision lists

The interesting part wasn’t building it.

The interesting part was realizing that interview preparation is less about collecting solutions and more about training how you think.

What has helped you improve more during interview prep?

Reading solutions?

Or struggling with the problem first?

Sde vault - https://sdevaultweb.onrender.com/

DEV Community: Ujjwal

The Interview Prep Mistake That Kept Holding Me Back