the plan

10 weeks to interview-ready

Ten weeks is the full-time pace: a few hours a day. Less time? Keep the same order and let each week stretch, or let start here turn your own hours into dates. No grinding hundreds of problems — understand each pattern deeply, then repeat the must-dos.

  1. week1

    Java for DSA

    Know what your Java code does in memory, and reach for the right collection without thinking.

    01 Java Memory02 Java Arrays & Strings03 Java OOP04 I/O & Debugging05 Java Toolkit

    habit: Type every snippet yourself once. Copy-paste teaches your clipboard, not you.

  2. week2

    Thinking tools

    Read code like a computer, count its cost, trust recursion, and know the maths shortcuts.

    06 Mindset07 Big-O08 Recursion09 Math & Numbers

    habit: Dry-run every example on paper before running it.

  3. week3

    Arrays & pointers

    Turn O(n²) loops into O(n) scans, in 1D and on grids.

    10 Arrays & Strings11 Matrices12 Two Pointers13 Sliding Window

    habit: Write brute force first, then say why the faster version is correct.

  4. week4

    Lookup & order

    Trade memory for speed with hashing; master lists, stacks and queues.

    14 Hashing15 Linked Lists16 Stacks17 Queues

    habit: Re-solve 2 must-dos from last week without looking.

  5. week5

    Search, sort & parse

    Halve the search space, know which sort Java uses and why, and parse input without panic.

    18 Binary Search19 Sorting20 Parsing

    habit: State the loop invariant out loud for every binary search.

  6. week6

    Trees

    Think recursively about left and right; use heaps for top-k and tries for prefixes.

    21 Traversals22 Tree Recursion23 BST24 Heaps25 Tries

    habit: Draw the tree. Always. Even for easy problems.

  7. week7

    Graphs

    BFS for shortest steps, DFS for exploration, Dijkstra for weights, low-links for weak spots.

    26 Graphs27 Shortest Paths28 Union-Find & MST29 Topo Sort30 Advanced Graphs

    habit: Model the problem as nodes + edges before writing any code.

  8. week8

    Search spaces

    Explore choices systematically; know when greedy is safe.

    31 Backtracking32 Greedy33 Intervals34 Bits

    habit: Draw the decision tree for the first two levels.

  9. week9

    Dynamic programming

    Recursion → memo → table, then the families: states, two strings, knapsack, intervals.

    35 Dynamic Programming36 DP Patterns

    habit: Write the state and the recurrence in one sentence before any code.

  10. week10

    Design & final boss

    Compose structures to hit a target cost, then range queries and string matching. Then mock interviews.

    37 Design DS38 Range Queries & Strings

    habit: Two timed mock interviews (45 min) — talk the whole time.