I used to do DSA without much math—binge-watch content, solve a few problems, and move on.
This time, I’m doing DSA alongside Banking Math, and ~30% into math, I’m already seeing a huge difference.
Spaced revision is powerful.
When a teacher shows 2 approaches, I write down both. I may have a favourite approach, but while coding on my own, I sometimes intuitively arrive at the approach I didn’t even prefer.
That’s when it clicked:
Learning → revisiting → applying → developing your own intuition.
At some point, the notes stop feeling like someone else’s notes.
They start feeling like your own understanding.
I’m curious to see how much this compounds as I continue DSA + Math in parallel.
Top comments (1)
Try once the following: Don't imperative.
First think up what the problem's doman is (without teacher or whoever).
Then for 1-3 days just think about it, don't commit to anything. Give yourself time, write down short notes of what came to your mind. Don't try solving the problem.
Then try formalizing neat small things you found out were always true irregards of the input etc.
Then sit down and just think up ways in which you could do something which is close to a solution. Time/space does not matter. Still no code.
Then just look at them, and pick the one that is lovely to you.
Then try writing it without any sort of worry about time/space still.
Once that is done, try it on an input and sit through while it chugs, and literally try seeing what the computer is doing.
Don't optimize, just look at it and think about it. If you feel anything is like "well that's a noob thing, we can do better" then do it.
Don't stress, goal is: F.U.N.
First 1-3 days are really crucial where you don't panic on it, just sort of think about it on afterburner mode. That's where you gain familiarity with the problem, so that it loses its foreignness to you. Become a little bit bored with the problem doman before trying to solve it. Really write down facts which seem so obvious that you don't even want to write them down. Write them down.
Then later, after the end, check how many turned out to be completely false or just gaslighting/non-productive and how many turned out to be true and valuable.