If you're prepping for coding interviews at top tech companies like Google, Amazon, or Meta, there’s one secret weapon you can’t ignore: mastering DSA patterns.
Forget brute-force memorization—interviewers want to see pattern recognition and problem-solving intuition. That’s where these 9 game-changing patterns come in.
Let’s break them down with 🔥 handpicked resources so you can prep smart, not just hard.
1. 👯 Two Pointers — The Fastest Pair in Town
Two pointers help you scan arrays and strings from both ends, or at different speeds, to eliminate brute-force.
💥 Perfect for: sorted arrays, palindromes, pair sums.
🔗 Resource:
👉 Solved all Two Pointers problems in 100 days (LeetCode)
2. 🔄 Sliding Window — Say Goodbye to Nested Loops
Imagine a moving window that adapts as you process subarrays or substrings—efficient and elegant.
🚀 Time complexity: O(n) for many problems that would otherwise be O(n²).
🔗 Resource:
👉 Sliding Window Technique and Question Bank
3. 💰 Greedy — Be Greedy the Smart Way
Pick the locally optimal choice at each step hoping for a globally optimal result. When it works, it’s fast, intuitive, and elegant.
🛠️ Used in: interval scheduling, coin change, minimum platforms, and more.
🔗 Resources:
4. 🔗 Linked Lists — Where Every Byte Counts
Linked Lists test your pointer-fu. If you know how to reverse, merge, and detect cycles, you’re already ahead.
🧠 Mastering linked lists shows deep understanding of memory and structure.
🔗 Resources:
5. 🌳 Trees — Rooted in Interviews
Trees are non-linear but very logical. They test recursion, DFS/BFS, and your understanding of hierarchies.
🌲 Binary Trees, BSTs, and Tries are interview darlings.
🔗 Resources:
6. 📉 Binary Search — Divide and Conquer Like a Pro
Cut your input in half every time—Binary Search is the king of log(n).
🔍 Used in: search problems, peak element, square root, rotated arrays.
🔗 Resources:
7. 📦 Dynamic Programming — The Brain Buster
DP is like a video game—once you unlock the patterns, everything gets easier.
🎮 Tabulation, Memoization, State Transition = unlock DP mastery.
🔗 Resources:
8. 🌐 Graphs — Think Networks & Connectivity
Graphs are everywhere: maps, social networks, dependency trees. Learn BFS, DFS, Dijkstra, Union-Find—you’ll use them all.
🔁 Think connections, traversal, shortest paths, and cycles.
🔗 Resources:
9. ⚙️ Bit Manipulation — Think Like a Machine
Bitwise tricks are wildly efficient for specific problem types: parity, subsets, state compression, etc.
💡 If you're XORing, ANDing, or shifting — you're doing it right.
🔗 Resources:
🔚 Final Thoughts
🎯 Want to stand out in your next interview?
Don’t memorize 500 LeetCode problems—master the patterns. They are the blueprint behind most questions asked in real interviews.
🧠 Pattern recognition → smart solving → offer letter.
💬 Let’s Connect!
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💬 Drop your favorite DSA resource in the comments!