You're faced with a coding challenge in a software engineering interview. How will you tackle it effectively?

✅ First and foremost, read the problem carefully. It sounds simple, but many people jump straight into coding without fully understanding what’s required. Take a deep breath, clarify the problem ✅ A key part of coding interviews is how you communicate your thought process. Even if you’re unsure of the best solution, talk through your reasoning. Tell the interviewer why you’re choosing a particular approach and what you’re considering. ✅ If you get stuck or make an error, don’t panic. Take a step back, reassess, and calmly work through the problem. ✅ It’s not just about writing code. It’s about how you think, how you approach problems, and how well you communicate your thought process.

To effectively tackle a coding challenge in a software engineering interview with a fresh perspective, consider these original tips: Clarify the Problem: Before jumping into coding, rephrase the problem in your own words and confirm your understanding with the interviewer. This ensures you're on the right track and helps avoid misunderstandings. Plan Your Approach: Spend a few minutes mapping out your solution on paper or mentally. Break down the problem into smaller, manageable steps. Consider different algorithms and data structures that could be applied. Prioritize Readability: Write code that is clean, well-organized, and easy to understand.

Clarify the Problem: Rephrase the problem in your own words and confirm with the interviewer to ensure you're aligned on the task, avoiding misunderstandings. Plan Your Approach: Take a few minutes to outline your solution. Break the problem into steps, considering which algorithms and data structures fit best. Prioritize Readability: Write clean, organized code that's easy to understand. Readable code demonstrates clear thinking and simplifies future maintenance.

Make sure you talk through the entire process, don’t get stuck in your own head. Don’t make assumptions on vague aspects, make sure all question marks are out of the way as early as possible. Don’t ever jump to writing code before you agree with your interviewer on the approach you’re taking. Drawing or writing some very high level pseudocode is perfectly fine though, in the very early stage.

The most important thing is to understand the task at hand. Clarify the question, if test cases are presented, then fine, else create and do a dry run of few cases. Get the approval of the interviewer. This is also the point to identify boundary conditions. Second, propose the solution, discuss and again engage, most interviews will steer you to the correct direction. Once you and the interviewer agree on a solution, start coding. Most LeetCode type questions leave very little scope to write production like code, but keep basics in mind ( not naming variables like a, aa, and function names like recurse , solve, backtrack ) Cover test cases, space / time complexity Answer any follow ups.

Many of the tasks in technical interviews can be solved with pattern recognition. 1) Read through the problem statement carefully and ask any clarifying questions 2) Try to think of similar problems to the current one at hand 3) Try to match the data structures and algorithms from the similar problem to this one and try to make a plan

My plans for coding challenges is always to start writing the entry point of the program, and write a bunch of doctests. Doing so, I not only shows that I'm used to automated test, but also helps understand where I start from and where I'm going with my code. I can run my tests once and make sure it's failing. Also, don't forget type annotations, to make expected inputs and output obvious for the interviewer, the IDE (that helps a lot), and yourself. Doing both doctests and type annotation also helps on a daily basis if you are AI-assisted, since it provide helpful information to the bot.

This is a crucial step. After understanding the question you need to come up with an approach. Go with anything that comes into your mind. Don't try to overthink or optimised approach at the beginning (Unless that is the first approach you can think of). Once thought, verify with pen paper dry run whether it's giving the expected answer for some basic cases. Then try some corner cases. If fine you can go ahead with that. Although in some cases Brute Force is the 1st approach that you should try (Hard or Medium) but in some cases (Easy) you should try a little bit optimised approach instead of brute force at the initial stage. If nothing comes into your mind then go ahead for brute force.

Keep it simple and only worry about the first 90%. Most of the projects I work on get overthought in an attempt to cover every possible scenario right away. Plan out a basic approach, and do not be afraid to start over as soon as you realize it is not working. Sunk cost fallacy is the biggest time sink I have ever had in a project.

After having the entry-point of my solution, doctests and type annotation defined, I start coding. I always aim for simple, easy to debug and easy to change code. I don't hesitate to split into smaller functions too, since having an additional doctests helps understand where you are and where you are going. I always prefer having long and descriptive variables over "x", "a", or something like this, since it help your interviewer understand what you are trying to do easily. Try to think out loud, and try to engage discussion with your interview, ask what he/she think of your approach, etc. Remember: Don't try to make the code or algorithm optimized. Make it work, first. You'll improve it later.

A lot of us may feel that they understood the problem statement and also have a solution for that. Now the task is to make the computer understand your approach. There’s no shortcut for that. The more you practice write code, the better you’ll become. Also seeing peers code after you’re done with your code is a good practice. Focus on improving the readability of your code by proper formatting and using meaningful variables name.

Once Planning is done you can start coding. I would suggest that you 1st explain the approach that you have thought of in brief. If any questions comes answer them up(Like can it be solved using this or why this approach ). Also take a point that what interviewer suggest may be that would be a better approach or not and explain the same. Then while coding you explain the part like why you did or whats the logic behind. Also any questions asked answer then as best as you can.

Linkedin says you need to test after writing your code. I disagree! Do your test FIRST. Doctest helps a lot with that! Define your program entrypoint, and start writing your tests, before any implementation. Then, never run your program: run your tests.

Test early, the moment you have a working prototype. If your earliest prototypes cannot pass basic execution tests, then any iterations will also have problems. Early testing will provide you a strong foundation of code to build on safely and efficiently.

Writing code I try to live by KISS. Keep It Simple Stupid. This applies to optimization as well, the more complex a piece of code is, the greater the chance that it will be inefficient. Things like nested loops that are not necessary, or an overabundance of variables and logic that does nothing. The simpler your code is, the easier it will be to optimize and keep optimized.

The explanation of code to the interviewer after it has passed the test cases can make it or break it. Here are some personal tips to make an impact while explaining the code: 1. Try to show a dry run of your code. 2. Having 2-3 approaches is always better, you can start by explaining the brute and then go to your optimal solution. 3. Take help of some test cases as well while explaining the code and also how you dealt different scenarios that could fail.