alt Hacker NewsShow HN: AlgoDrill – Interactive drills to stop forgetting LeetCode patterns
I built AlgoDrill because I kept grinding LeetCode, thinking I knew the pattern, and then completely blanking when I had to implement it from scratch a few weeks later.
AlgoDrill turns NeetCode 150 and more into pattern-based drills: you rebuild the solution line by line with active recall, get first principles editorials that explain why each step exists, and everything is tagged by patterns like sliding window, two pointers, and DP so you can hammer the ones you keep forgetting. The goal is simple: turn familiar patterns into code you can write quickly and confidently in a real interview.
Would love feedback on whether this drill-style approach feels like a real upgrade over just solving problems once, and what’s most confusing or missing when you first land on the site.
Comments
AlgoDrill is so futuristic, that Gemini 3 included it in the HN front page 10 years from now (#5): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46205632
What threw me off is the expectation that I use the same variable names and exact same code structure. There are many ways to implement effectively the same thing. I understand that it would be very challenging to implement a way to validate solutions in this way, but memorizing exact fragments of code feels like it's optimizing for the wrong thing.
I like the idea, and you've got yourself a customer :)
The lifetime membership + launch discount was a good marketing bait I felt for.
Not really understanding the negativity here. We know for a fact that most of the people that master intellectual problems do so via pattern recognition, not by reasoning.
You show a chess master a position, he/she can instantly tell you what the best moves are without "thinking" or "calculating" because it's mostly pattern recognition.
Maths and algorithms fall in the same category. When approaching new problems, masters don't really start processing the information and reasoning about it, instead they use pattern recognition to find what are very similar problems.
The thing I really don't like is the lack of TypeScript or at least JavaScript, which are the most common languages out there. I really don't enjoy nor use Java/Python/C++.
I understand the pragmatic reasons behind such a decision, but insisting that I sign up with Google (and only Google) was an unfortunate blocker.
If anything, GitHub seems like a more obvious choice for such a site.
Is it correctly understood that this is Anki for a subset of leetcode problems with study notes?
I bit more info on what NeetCode is, why I should focus on those 150 problems and how the drilling actually work would be helpful. Do I get asked to do the same problems on repeat? Is it the same problems reformulated over and over? Is there actualy any spaced repetition, or am I projecting?
I got hooked without realizing that I'm not super familiar with any of the languages. JS would help,but I was hoping to use Go (or Ruby at least).
Thank you either way, I purchased I license
I learned the other day (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46184676) that people who aren't students apparently use LeetCode too, for recreational purposes? I'm not sure why you'd work on someone else's imaginary problem instead of doing something for yourself, so apparently it's there and some people enjoy it, regardless of my understanding of it.
But then I don't know how to reconcile the idea that some people use LeetCode to pass interviews, some use it recreationally, but then this app seems to indicate some people use LeetCode to learn patterns to implement in the real world, which seems absolutely backwards to me. These are tiny examples, not "real programming" like you'd encounter in the world outside of computers, LeetCode can impossibly teach you how to create useful programs, it only teaches you syntax and specific problems.
So I guess take this as a word of caution, that no matter how much you grind LeetCode, nothing will prepare you to solve real world problems as practicing solving real world problems, and you don't need any platforms for that, just try to make your daily life better and you'll get better at it over time and with experience of making mistakes.
This might be the answer for me, you're breaking down all these questions into actual smaller steps and having the user write those out instead .
I dislike limited offers, because I think you're placing a bit of unfair pressure on the user to buy. But I went ahead and gave you 30 bucks.
I'm going to study this before my next interview, thank you
I feel like this is a bit backwards. It seems to be an improvement over just grinding LeetCode, but I'd never work for a company expecting me to spit out LeetCode solutions quickly (recall). If they give me a LeetCode style problem and want to see how I approach this, what I know, how I deal with what I don't, then it's fine. But I think neither LeetCode or AlgoDrill are needed for this.
Or to put it another way, if I give some applicant a coding problem to solve, and they just write down the solution, I didn't learn much about them except they memorized the solution to my problem. That most likely means I gave them the wrong (too easy) problem. It will only increase the change of me hiring them by a tiny bit.
Edit: I don't hate the player, I hate the game.
Nice, you have identified shovel very well.
I like it. I subscribed. The check is definitely rough around the edges though. Memorizing the exact variable names is tough. I think the objectives should maybe give you the variable names it expects at least.
Seems like a good idea, is it the same kind of concept as the woodpecker method in chess ?
The website is missing information on which languages it supports. I was hoping for Typescript, but after registering I see that it's only Python at the moment and it seems Java and C++ are coming soon...
You can do similar here for free
Lol I saw this being spammed in the comments on every reddit thread when looking for interview prep
Why is text selection disabled in study mode? Is this an intentional design choice?
Solid platform - clean and useful for algorithm practice.
Quick suggestions:
- GitHub OAuth would feel natural for devs.
- Broaden language support (C#, TypeScript, Ruby).
- Add dark/light mode toggle for comfort.
I want to like this. But... one has to write the answer in EXACTLY the same format, down to each variable name it seems?
Actually curious, how often do you find uses for LeetCode patterns in your actual work?
Any company using leetcode as their primary way to assess competency is time wasting, soulless black hole unworthy of any real talent.
I tried the two sum and found it kind of strange to do line by line recall, I thought the only way we could memorize hundreds of leetcode is to think in chunks that are several lines, not one line at a time
Is there any way to try it without signing in via Google?
That's certainly a (to me) very unusual way to learn programming.
Nice! How long will leetcode style interviews stay around for though...
I want to test out the platform but I'm getting an SSL error on account creation - anyone else?
This is a good product, the mechanism for me was an excel sheet. I wont sign up though, I've ground enough LC. These days I dont even prep for algorithm rounds and still manage to land offers. But I'd have appreciated this when grinding myself.
...the f?! why are we interviewing ppl for things like this?!
you either:
(a) want DEEP understanding of math and proofs behind algorithms etc.
(b) can get away with very high level understanding, and refer to documentation and/or use LLMs for implementation details help
there is no real world use case for a middle-ground (c) where you want someone with algo implementation details rote-memorized in their brain and without the very deep understanding that would make the rote-memorization unnecessary!
and yet people still can't build software.
now the same people in the industry advocating for leetcode are also advocating for vibecoding. I wonder if an LLM is made to do leetcode before approval for vibecoding.
day in day out, the software gets worse, delayed, shipped with bugs, very slow yet yeah prove to us you can build software by doing puzzles
if you advocate for leetcode - fxxk yxx.
This project has potential but there are some issues with "Marketing" (I call this lying depending on how it's done)
Please stop with the false urgency and borderline lying to people saying there are 17 spots when they most likely aren't.
Doing this to sell more is unethical and dishonest.
I think if this project didn't do this it might work and go far.
Rust version?
Nice work, this is a pretty cool project.
But fuck leetcode. With AI, its obsolete at this point.
The idea of getting quizzed on how good you are at recalling specific patterns in algorithm construction is completely and utterly bizarre.
I get that some people feel forced into it, but nobody can believe that this is an appropriate measure to judge programmers on. Sure, being able to understand and implement algorithms is important, but this is not what this is training for.
Yet another paid tool.
Leetcode wants subscription, NeetCode wants subscription, and now - yet another one thing.
Some feedback: The drill style approach seems helpful, but needing the variable names to exactly match threw me off. It would be great if we could _relax_ this constraint via a toggle for drill mode. "Precision Mode" feels like it's misnamed; when it's toggled on it feels more like a "guided mode" since chunks of boilerplate are written for you. It would be great if exiting Drill mode remembered choices, such as what portions were selected.
Ended up deciding to buy a subscription, but looks like the site still says "82% claimed" and "17 spots left". I appreciate the one-time purchase model, but feel that it's a bit shady of a tactic.