I am currently preparing for Software Engineer interviews.
Like many developers, my first instinct was to open LeetCode and start grinding problems.
It seems that most interview prep I see suggests grinding random problems.
Instead I decided to focus on understanding the underlying patterns rather than memorizing the problems.
Practicing structured retrieval and being aware of how everything connects together is key.
I'd rather deeply understand 20 patterns than superficially solve 200 problems.
Many interview questions are simply variations of the same underlying ideas.
So I built a tool focused on recognizing patterns, recalling templates, and explaining tradeoffs out loud.
With this app, you can practice the following:
- DS&A pattern flashcards
- Problem → pattern quizzes
- JavaScript code template fill-ins
- Complexity quizzes
- System design cheatsheets
- System design flashcards
- Tradeoff quizzes
- Explain-back scenarios
I am currently using the tool and am finding it useful in my interview preparation: once you start recognizing the pattern, the implementation becomes much easier to reason about.
I wanted to share the tool here in case it helps others preparing for interviews. I deployed it on Vercel to be easily used by everyone. But you can also run it locally.
Note that I don't collect or persist any data with this project. It uses local storage.
There is no login, you can just start practicing immediately.
The code is open source if you want to fork it and adapt it for your own needs.
Tech Stack used for this project:
- Next.js
- TypeScript
- React
- Tailwind CSS
- LocalStorage
- Static typed data files
This project was also a fun experiment in AI-assisted development.
I feel that building internal tools that help me in my daily life is a great use case for AI.
Since I am actively preparing for interviews, I would love to gauge the community here and learn from you too:
How do you prepare best for SWE interviews? Any tips to share?
What preparation methods gave you the highest ROI?
I'm also exploring Software Engineer opportunities, so I'd be happy to connect with anyone hiring or going through a similar search.
Top comments (21)
Wow, Julien, I'm absolutely blown away by the sheer genius of your interview prep tool. You finally made it real!! I mean, who needs to spend hours on LeetCode problems when you can create something that helps people really grasp the underlying ideas? The fact that it's open-source and can be used locally or on Vercel is just the cherry on top. I'm seriously considering using this in my own prep routine, do you think it would be possible to add some kind of community feature for users to share their own templates or pattern flashcards?
Thanks Aryan!
Exactly, I am happy that you are aligned with my approach here.
Feel free to use the tool! I am currently using it for my own interview prep.
Yeah definitely, it could be interesting to add this community feature if its valuable to you and others. I can look into it.
I added some contributing guidelines here, feel free to give it a try: github.com/JulienAvezou/swe-interv...
Awesome! Just saw the contributing guidelines. I'll take a look this weekend and see if I can make my first contribution 👀
I practice interview situations by explaining how I solve coding challenges daily (one from CodeWars and one from freeCodeCamp). I even record myself and from there I can avoid some bad habits I never would have found if it was not caught on camera. Been doing it a while now and I can honestly see some improvements on my side.
Here's my current video files:
PS. It's nice that I could compare my progress against my old videos.
This is a very smart approach Elmar! I can definitely see the value of explain-back situations here and being able to observe improvements over time that simulate an interview scenario
Wait I need this lol. Will check it out!
Sounds good! Let me know if you have any feedback!
Julien, this is great timing. I was actually looking for something that focuses more on patterns and reasoning rather than just grinding through problem after problem.
Thanks for sharing this. I'll give it a look, and good luck with the interviews.
Sounds great Hemapriya.
Thank you. I also wish you the best of luck for your interviews :)
Love this approach! 🧠 Grinding 200 random LeetCode problems usually just leads to short-term memorization, whereas mastering 20 core patterns gives you a framework to solve literally anything thrown at you.
Exactly! I wanted to develop real learning patterns here.
Great job, Julien! It will help people for the technical interview. Good luck, buddy for your interview.
Thanks Ben! Will let you know how it goes :)
it sound good :).
This is amazing! Usually interview prep overwhelms me, but this helps my focus on certain leetcode problems
Thanks Christelle! Glad you find it useful.
definitely checking it out, pattern matching is really valuable
nice! let me know if you have any feedback
Nice write-up! For devs who deal with messy copied text, TextStow might help — it's a Mac menu bar tool combining clipboard history with prompt templates and text cleanup. Free: textstow.com
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