Best Seller

Grokking the Coding Interview: Patterns for Coding Questions

Fast track your coding interview prep by learning coding patterns. Act smartly, and follow the coding patterns.

Level:
Intermediate
Study Time:
90h
Lessons:
669
Playgrounds:
751
Updated
Last month
4.6
(62,916 ratings)
188,501 learners
Arslan Ahmad
Created byArslan Ahmad
Ex FAANG Manager, Expert Behind Grokking the Coding Interview: Patterns for Coding Questions

Course Overview

Coding interviews are becoming increasingly challenging. A few years back, brushing up on key data structures and going through 50 to 75 coding interview questions was more than enough prep for an interview. Today, everyone has access to massive sets of coding problems, and they have become more difficult to account for. The process has gotten more competitive. When our team sat together to brainstorm ideas to make the interview process easier for candidates, we quickly realized that one skill helped us the most when preparing for coding interviews: "the ability to map a new problem to an already known problem." To help candidates with this, we have compiled a list of 32 common coding patterns to help solve coding questions. The idea is that once you are familiar with a pattern, you'll be able to solve dozens of problems with it. The techniques taught in this course have helped developers land jobs at top companies like Google, Meta, Amazon, Oracle, OpenAI, and Microsoft.

Grokking the Coding Interview: Patterns for Coding Questions Image
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Lifetime access to this course
One-time payment. Yours forever.
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Grokking the Coding Interview: Patterns for Coding Questions Image
Best value
Lifetime access to this course
One-time payment. Yours forever.
$197
Discussions
Certificate
Free updates
Want all 36+ courses?

Course Content

Chapters • 669 Lessons
1.

Introduction

2 lessons

Who Should Take This Course?

12.

Level Order Traversal Pattern

New
15 lessons
34.

Counting Pattern (easy)

13 lessons

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35.

Monotonic Queue Pattern (easy)

11 lessons
36.

Simulation Pattern (easy)

13 lessons

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37.

Linear Sorting Algorithm Pattern (easy)

16 lessons

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38.

Meet in the Middle Pattern (medium)

11 lessons

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39.

MO’s Algorithm Pattern (medium)

9 lessons

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40.

Serialize and Deserialize Pattern (medium)

11 lessons

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41.

Clone Pattern (medium)

9 lessons

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42.

Articulation Points and Bridges Pattern (hard)

9 lessons

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43.

Segment Tree Pattern (hard)

10 lessons

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44.

Binary Indexed Tree Pattern (hard)

14 lessons
45.

Miscellaneous

2 lessons
46.

Revision

1 lessons
50.

Conclusions

1 lessons

What people say about our courses

Ashley Pean avatar
Ashley Pean
Software Engineer
Check out Grokking the Coding Interview. Instead of trying out random Algos, they break down the patterns you need to solve them. Helps immensely with retention!
Simon Barker avatar
Simon Barker
Software Engineer
This is what I love about http://designgurus.io’s Grokking the coding interview course. They teach patterns rather than solutions.
Roger Cruz avatar
Roger Cruz
Software Engineer
The world gets better inch by inch when you help someone else. If you haven't tried Grokking The Coding Interview, check it out, it's a great resource!
pikacodes avatar
pikacodes
Software Engineer
I've tried every possible resource (Blind 75, Neetcode, YouTube, Cracking the Coding Interview, Udemy) and idk if it was just the right time or everything finally clicked but everything's been so easy to grasp recently with Grokking the Coding Interview!
Matzuk avatar
Matzuk
Software Engineer
Algorithms can be daunting, but they're less so with the right guide. This course - https://www.designgurus.io/course/grokking-the-coding-interview, is a great starting point. It covers typical problems you might encounter in interviews.
Tonya Sims avatar
Tonya Sims
Software Engineer
DesignGurus.io "Grokking the Coding Interview". One of the best resources I’ve found for learning the major patterns behind solving coding problems.
MO JAFRI avatar
MO JAFRI
Software Engineer
The courses which have "grokking" before them, are exceptionally well put together! These courses magically condense 3 years of CS in short bite-size courses and lectures (I have tried Grokking System Design Interview, OODI, and Coding patterns). The Grokking courses are godsent, to be honest.
ABHISHEK GUPTA avatar
ABHISHEK GUPTA
Software Engineer
My offer from the top tech company would not have been possible without Grokking System Design. Many thanks!!
KAUSHIK JONNADULA avatar
KAUSHIK JONNADULA
Software Engineer
Thanks for a great resource! You guys are a lifesaver. I struggled a lot in design interviews, and Grokking System Design gave me an organized process to handle a design problem. Please keep adding more questions.

About the Author

Arslan Ahmad

Arslan Ahmad

Design Gurus Founder
Ex-FAANG Manager
Meta
Microsoft
Google
Amazon
Uber

Industry Expertise & Leadership

Arslan Ahmad is the lead author of Grokking the Coding Interview: Patterns for Coding Questions. As the founder of Design Gurus and a former FAANG hiring manager, he has worked at industry giants like Facebook (now Meta) and Microsoft.

He has conducted hundreds of system design interviews, giving him unique insight into what top tech companies look for in candidates.

The course also incorporates expertise from senior engineers at Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Uber, ensuring you learn system design best practices from professionals who have built and scaled real-world systems.

500+

Interviews Conducted

10k+

Students Taught

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FAQs

Grokking the Coding Interview: Patterns for Coding Questions is an online course that teaches you how to solve coding interview problems using reusable patterns, instead of memorizing hundreds of individual questions. It's the original coding patterns course and it's rated 4.6 out of 5 by more than 62,000 learners. Whether you're a new grad facing your first coding round or a senior engineer brushing up before interviews, it gives you a clear, structured way to prepare so you can walk in confident.

Coding patterns are reusable problem-solving templates like Two Pointers, Sliding Window, Merge Intervals, and Topological Sort, and each one unlocks a whole family of interview questions. Instead of grinding through hundreds of unrelated problems, Grokking the Coding Interview organizes its 245 problems around these patterns, so you learn the underlying approach once and start recognizing it everywhere. Once you can see the pattern behind a question, even unfamiliar problems feel approachable.

Grokking the Coding Interview was created by the team at Design Gurus, led by Arslan Ahmad, an ex-FAANG engineer and former hiring manager at Meta and Microsoft. Having sat on both sides of the interview table, he built the course around what interviewers actually look for. The pattern-based approach it introduced has since been used by hundreds of thousands of engineers preparing for coding interviews.

Yes, it's beginner-friendly and needs no prior experience. The course introduces each pattern from the ground up and builds toward harder problems gradually, so even if you're new to coding interviews you can follow along comfortably.

LeetCode is a huge bank of problems you practice on your own, while Grokking the Coding Interview is a structured course that teaches you the patterns behind those problems. Rather than solving questions at random and hoping something sticks, you learn a focused set of coding patterns backed by 245 hand-picked problems. The result is that you start seeing the strategy behind a question instead of memorizing one-off solutions.

Grokking the Coding Interview includes 245 hand-picked coding problems, organized into pattern-based chapters that move from easy to hard. Each chapter centers on a single pattern and works through the problems that reinforce it, so you build real depth in one pattern before moving on to the next. By the end you've covered a wide range of patterns with plenty of practice in each.

Yes, Design Gurus gives you a certificate of completion once you finish all the modules, and you can add it to your LinkedIn profile or share it with employers.

You can start Grokking the Coding Interview for free on DesignGurus.io. The free tier lets you explore the introductory lessons and get a feel for how the course is structured before you commit. For full access to all 245 problems and their solutions, you can either buy lifetime access to this course or take an annual subscription that unlocks every Design Gurus course, and discounted regional pricing is available.

Grokking the Coding Interview gives you solutions in Python, Java, C++, JavaScript, Go, and C#, so you can learn and practice in whatever language you'll actually use in your interview.

No, they're two different courses today. The official, continuously updated Grokking the Coding Interview lives only on DesignGurus.io, built and maintained by the original creators. An earlier text-only version was once hosted on the third-party platform Educative, but that edition is no longer maintained by the original authors, so for the authentic, up-to-date course, DesignGurus.io is the only place to find it.

Grokking the Coding Interview is built to prepare you for the coding round used at FAANG and other top tech companies, because it teaches the patterns behind the questions those interviews rely on. You'll practice exactly what interviewers evaluate: spotting the right pattern, writing a correct solution, and reasoning about time and space complexity. That mix is what helps you stay calm and structured when a tough problem shows up.

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