I am currently preparing for Software Engineer interviews.
Like many developers, my first instinct was to open LeetCode and start grinding problems.
It seems that most interview prep I see suggests grinding random problems.
Instead I decided to focus on understanding the underlying patterns rather than memorizing the problems.
Practicing structured retrieval and being aware of how everything connects together is key.
I'd rather deeply understand 20 patterns than superficially solve 200 problems.
Many interview questions are simply variations of the same underlying ideas.
So I built a tool focused on recognizing patterns, recalling templates, and explaining tradeoffs out loud.
With this app, you can practice the following:
- DS&A pattern flashcards
- Problem → pattern quizzes
- JavaScript code template fill-ins
- Complexity quizzes
- System design cheatsheets
- System design flashcards
- Tradeoff quizzes
- Explain-back scenarios
I am currently using the tool and am finding it useful in my interview preparation: once you start recognizing the pattern, the implementation becomes much easier to reason about.
I wanted to share the tool here in case it helps others preparing for interviews. I deployed it on Vercel to be easily used by everyone. But you can also run it locally.
Note that I don't collect or persist any data with this project. It uses local storage.
There is no login, you can just start practicing immediately.
The code is open source if you want to fork it and adapt it for your own needs.
Tech Stack used for this project:
- Next.js
- TypeScript
- React
- Tailwind CSS
- LocalStorage
- Static typed data files
This project was also a fun experiment in AI-assisted development.
I feel that building internal tools that help me in my daily life is a great use case for AI.
Since I am actively preparing for interviews, I would love to gauge the community here and learn from you too:
How do you prepare best for SWE interviews? Any tips to share?
What preparation methods gave you the highest ROI?
I'm also exploring Software Engineer opportunities, so I'd be happy to connect with anyone hiring or going through a similar search.
Top comments (1)
Wow, Julien, I'm absolutely blown away by the sheer genius of your interview prep tool. You finally made it real!! I mean, who needs to spend hours on LeetCode problems when you can create something that helps people really grasp the underlying ideas? The fact that it's open-source and can be used locally or on Vercel is just the cherry on top. I'm seriously considering using this in my own prep routine, do you think it would be possible to add some kind of community feature for users to share their own templates or pattern flashcards?