Week 1 (continued): WWCD Mentorship Program — DSA preparation and upcoming opportunities

This blog is a continutaion to the previous blog for week 1. Here, I share the outcomes from my assigned tasks, including topics for DSA preparation and upcoming opportunities.

My first task was to find a peer who is also learning DSA, to discuss problems and make it a compulsory habit to code every day. For that, I talked to one of my close friends who is currently preparing DSA to get a job after her masters. I have also made a tracker to be aware of my daily coding practice and help me stay motivated to code daily.

DSA preparation topics

I collected some commonly asked topics in DSA by going through Geeks for Geeks and doing some searching on other sites. Please note that the topics which I have mentioned below are for the companies I am targetting and it is not an exhaustive list for all product based companies.

Data structures

• Arrays
• Matrices (frequently asked)
• String manipulations/Ad hoc (frequently asked)
• Linked list (important)
• Stacks and queues
• Trees (traversals — inorder, preorder, postorder and adding/deleting nodes)
• Graphs (BFS/DFS)
• Hash tables (little less common, but still can be asked)

Algorithms

• Dynamic programming questions
• Recursion (important)
• Greedy algorithm questions
• Backtracking

It should also be noted that it is best to practice coding on Google docs (few days before an interview) since a compiler is generally not provided. You should also remember to handle corner test cases and execute dry runs before saying that you’re done.

It is also recommended to practice at least 150 medium and hard questions from coding practice platforms like Geeks for Geeks, Hackerrank or Leetcode.

To view curated company-wise or topic-wise questions commonly asked you can also change filters and practice through here.

I also came across Pramp, where you can practice giving a mock interview with a random peer. This helps you by giving you the feel of coding under pressure within a given time limit and also makes you learn how to communicate your thoughts while coding in front of the interviewer.

Upcoming opportunities

Here I have included a variety of opportunities including open source and some other programs as well.

• MLH Fellowship
• Tezos India Fellowship
• Outreachy
• Google summer of code
• FOSSASIA internship program
• Hyperledger Mentorship Program
• LFN Mentorship Program

If you wish to know which of these you are eligible for, or want to view basic details of all programs in one place, you can go to opportunist.tech, built by someone who badly needed such a site 😜

In case you are aware of any more such opportunities or have any feedback, you can reach out to me in the comments or fill out the feedback option in the Opportunist website itself. Thank you!