I’ve learned for myself that I need to write code just to keep my brain in shape - same as going to the gym to be healthy.

Even though agents are building all of my code now, I’m starting every morning with a LeetCode problem. There is no practical use, but it make me feel good and sharp for the rest of the day.

For anyone coping with AI I suggest to give it a try, and stick to it for some time, just like with a gym.

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mattm 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I've settled on writing my own code for about 30-60 minutes per day. One benefit I've noticed is that it helps me be a bit more critical and questioning of decisions made in the code as compared to just doing code review of the LLM's output. I think this ends up being a nice balance.

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gottagocode 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think this is a really good idea; I usually do this for about a month until I tell myself my time is better spent building or playing something that I don't have to convince myself that I truly enjoy.

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kilroy123 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Smart. I've been thinking about doing the same.

I regret not doing this 10 years ago. Just ~20 minutes of leetcode practice for a decade. I could have landed so much better gigs. :-/

	▲	mysterydip 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		As the saying goes, “the best time to start would have been 10 years ago. The second best time is today”

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jplusequalt 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>I’m starting every morning with a LeetCode problem.

Keeping with your example, this is the equivalent of going to the gym just to do a single set on the bench press.

Your brain is still atrophying.

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cyberpunk 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Sure about that? The effort put into a leetcode medium or hard is usually way above the kind of code i’m mostly doing at work — and realistically i only have at most 2 hours a day of that level of work in me, the rest is the autopilot code, reviews meetings, docs etc.

I’ve found aoc/leetcode pretty much reversed the accidental atrophy for me

	▲	sph 8 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		There is more to software engineering than solving code puzzles. What about debugging, writing clean code, writing effective tests, architecture, optimization, profiling etc.? None of these are exercised by doing leetcode. Use it or lose it.
	▲	eska 27 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Leetcode is about learning an algorithm/data structure. Programming in general is about much more than that. Knowing minimax and ring buffers doesn’t help much in knowing whether what your LLM does makes sense. For that you need to work on more open ended questions.