Over the past couple of years, I've spent a lot of time preparing for software engineering interviews. Like many developers, I started my Data Structures and Algorithms journey focused on memorization. I wanted to know every pattern, every trick, every LeetCode solution. If a problem looked like Two Pointers, I'd use Two Pointers. If it looked like Dynamic Programming, I'd try Dynamic Programming.
What I didn't realize at the time was that strong problem solvers aren't just pattern matchers. They're detectives. They look for clues before they write a single line of code.
One of the biggest shifts in my thinking came when I started paying much closer attention to constraints.
Constraints Are Hidden Hints
One of the biggest breakthroughs in my interview preparation came when I started treating constraints as clues rather than restrictions. Recently, I was working through a LeetCode problem called How Many Numbers Are Smaller Than the Current Number.
