LeetCode
0001-01-01T00:00:00Z | 3 minute read | Updated at 0001-01-01T00:00:00Z
LeetCode is famous for its coding problems. I really like solving problems, so I had to try it out, and somehow I’ve been doing the daily challenges for a while now.
I love problem-solving, and LeetCode is a great playground to keep my skills sharp. Because like any good programmer, I'd rather waste 10 hours automating a 5-minute task, I created a tool to generate the problems, the testsuite, and push to LeetCode. It's been working for some months now, and I can't see myself doing the problems without it. Now, I simply open my IDE, run "generate", solve the problem, and "publish" it back. Curious about my solutions or the tool? Check out the source code on GitHub!
LeetCode is a website that provides a series of coding problems.
My LeetCode journey began over four years ago, on April 2, 2020, during my first year of engineering school. I was just starting to learn C# at the time, and I wanted to try out some problems to see if I could solve them.
My first submission? A glorious “Compile Error”:
At least I was consistent: my instinct to code at 2 a.m. was already strong back then—a true mark of a programmer, right?
Of course, my second submission was much better - no more “Compile Error”, but a “Runtime Error”… Classic out-of-bounds… But hey, third time’s a charm, and I finally got my first… “Wrong Answer”!
Persistence paid off, as always. After yet another “Runtime Error” (because why bother checking your code when the machine can do it for you?), I finally got the coveted “Accepted”!
While still in the mood, I did a second problem, this time in C. I didn’t learn about pointers back then, so at 3am and after a few rounds of “Compile Error” I just gave up, went to bed, and as they say, sleep on it. The next day, I solved it in a few minutes.
I took a long break from LeetCode, but in December 2023, during Advent of Code, I rediscovered my love for solving programming puzzles. And so, I decide to give LeetCode another try, and I’ve been tackling the daily challenges ever since.
After having a blast automating problem generation for Advent of Code, I figured, why not do the same for LeetCode? So, I built a script that generates the problem template, sets up a test suite, and pushes my solution back to LeetCode.
Building this tool wasn’t as simple as I expected, though. LeetCode had made their API private, so I had to reverse-engineer their GraphQL queries. This involved a lot of console inspecting and clicking everywhere to figure out what was going on. But eventually, I built something solid that’s been working for months.
Now, solving LeetCode problems is as simple as opening my IDE, running my “generate” command, coding up the solution, and hitting “publish.” I can’t imagine going back to the manual way of doing it, even if it’s just a few clicks.
Curious about the tool or want to see my LeetCode solutions? You can find everything on my GitHub.
