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Elements of Programming Interviews in Python: The Insiders' Guide
This is the Python version of our book. See the website for links to the C++ and Java version.Have you ever...
Wanted to work at an exciting futuristic company?Struggled with an interview problem thatcould have been solved in 15 minutes?Wished you could study real-world computing problems?If so, you need to read Elements of Programming Interviews (EPI).
EPI is your comprehensive guide to interviewing for software development roles.
The core of EPI is a collection of over 250 problems with detailed solutions. The problems are representative of interview questions asked at leading software companies. The problems are illustrated with 200 figures, 300 tested programs, and 150 additional variants.
The book begins with a summary of the nontechnical aspects of interviewing, such as strategies for a great interview, common mistakes, perspectives from the other side of the table, tips on negotiating the best offer, and a guide to the best ways to use EPI. We also provide a summary of data structures, algorithms, and problem solving patterns.
Coding problems are presented through a series of chapters on basic and advanced data structures, searching, sorting, algorithm design principles, and concurrency. Each chapter stars with a brief introduction, a case study, top tips, and a review of the most important library methods. This is followed by a broad and thought-provoking set of problems.
A practical, fun approach to computer science fundamentals, as seen through the lens of common programming interview questions.Jeff Atwood/Co-founder, Stack Overflow and Discourse
Wanted to work at an exciting futuristic company?Struggled with an interview problem thatcould have been solved in 15 minutes?Wished you could study real-world computing problems?If so, you need to read Elements of Programming Interviews (EPI).
EPI is your comprehensive guide to interviewing for software development roles.
The core of EPI is a collection of over 250 problems with detailed solutions. The problems are representative of interview questions asked at leading software companies. The problems are illustrated with 200 figures, 300 tested programs, and 150 additional variants.
The book begins with a summary of the nontechnical aspects of interviewing, such as strategies for a great interview, common mistakes, perspectives from the other side of the table, tips on negotiating the best offer, and a guide to the best ways to use EPI. We also provide a summary of data structures, algorithms, and problem solving patterns.
Coding problems are presented through a series of chapters on basic and advanced data structures, searching, sorting, algorithm design principles, and concurrency. Each chapter stars with a brief introduction, a case study, top tips, and a review of the most important library methods. This is followed by a broad and thought-provoking set of problems.
A practical, fun approach to computer science fundamentals, as seen through the lens of common programming interview questions.Jeff Atwood/Co-founder, Stack Overflow and Discourse
820 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 20, 2022
109 people are currently reading
1280 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
February 8, 2022
This book helped me to land an internship offer in Google and several new grad software engineering offers from FAANG companies such as Google, Facebook, and Stripe.
I'd highly recommend this book to an ambitious friend who's looking to brush-up on their data structure and algorithm knowledge, rather than just telling them to "grind LeetCode" (this can act as a perfect supplement for LeetCode)
The book also comes with EPIJudge (https://github.com/adnanaziz/EPIJudge) which can be cloned and run in your local machines.
I thought I already knew Python before reading this book, but I was wrong. This book really teaches me how to write idiomatic Python code, and introduced me to lots of useful libraries that I use during programming interviews.
I didn't regret buying the book and shipping it from America all the way to Indonesia 😁
I didn't manage to finish all the content in the book (maybe just around 50-60%), and I think I would still need to revisit this book in the future 👍
I'd highly recommend this book to an ambitious friend who's looking to brush-up on their data structure and algorithm knowledge, rather than just telling them to "grind LeetCode" (this can act as a perfect supplement for LeetCode)
The book also comes with EPIJudge (https://github.com/adnanaziz/EPIJudge) which can be cloned and run in your local machines.
I thought I already knew Python before reading this book, but I was wrong. This book really teaches me how to write idiomatic Python code, and introduced me to lots of useful libraries that I use during programming interviews.
I didn't regret buying the book and shipping it from America all the way to Indonesia 😁
I didn't manage to finish all the content in the book (maybe just around 50-60%), and I think I would still need to revisit this book in the future 👍
February 12, 2020
The perfect complement to a premium subscription to leetcode.com. The solutions in this book are uniformly high quality, written in idiomatic python, and always give a full explanation. The authors also reveal which libraries you should learn and use during whiteboard interviews, which concepts can be glossed over and which should be studied closely. While the "Google interview prep" industry is rife with low-quality content, but this book holds itself to a high standard.
The meat of the book is chapters 4-14, containing problems like those used in Google interviews, and other companies that have modeled their interviews after Google's. Work through these chapters, read the solutions, and if don't learn something, you're ready to interview!
The meat of the book is chapters 4-14, containing problems like those used in Google interviews, and other companies that have modeled their interviews after Google's. Work through these chapters, read the solutions, and if don't learn something, you're ready to interview!
May 28, 2017
I've read and worked through quite a few programming interview books at this point.
EPI in Python is my favorite. And not by a little. By a **huge** margin.
It's the most straightforward, it's the easiest to understand, and it has guided solutions written in Python.
Whether you're interviewing or not, I think it's rewarding to work through this. You'll learn a ton.
There are hundreds of questions, but the authors provide a series of pathways to work through -- if you're planning for an interview in the next [ week | month | quarter | year ]. Wish CTCI had that. This feature alone makes it worth the money, IMO.
EPI in Python is my favorite. And not by a little. By a **huge** margin.
It's the most straightforward, it's the easiest to understand, and it has guided solutions written in Python.
Whether you're interviewing or not, I think it's rewarding to work through this. You'll learn a ton.
There are hundreds of questions, but the authors provide a series of pathways to work through -- if you're planning for an interview in the next [ week | month | quarter | year ]. Wish CTCI had that. This feature alone makes it worth the money, IMO.
March 18, 2023
Disclaimer, I probably only worked on 50% of exercises (columns C0, C1, C2 and some C3 IIRC (but no C4, so I could test myself again with fresh new problems) in Table 1.2). I read this pre-GPT craze, not sure how useful, or how I would rate the problems now tbh.
What I like the most:
- the structure (Table 1.2), on which problems to approach to prepare an interview, depending on how much time you have and want to spend every week. So one may get a nice selection on a range of different topics. I also like the explanations and hints afterwards.
- the Github Judge, since it had a good amount of test cases, and it was useful to find corner cases I might've missed and my code would fail otherwise. It also saves time to focus more on algorithms https://github.com/adnanaziz/EPIJudge
What I didn't like... the introduction to each topic was lacking. Many problems or answers would refer to other topics which would not be introduced after several chapters later... Should've kept that in mind when structuring the book.
What I like the most:
- the structure (Table 1.2), on which problems to approach to prepare an interview, depending on how much time you have and want to spend every week. So one may get a nice selection on a range of different topics. I also like the explanations and hints afterwards.
- the Github Judge, since it had a good amount of test cases, and it was useful to find corner cases I might've missed and my code would fail otherwise. It also saves time to focus more on algorithms https://github.com/adnanaziz/EPIJudge
What I didn't like... the introduction to each topic was lacking. Many problems or answers would refer to other topics which would not be introduced after several chapters later... Should've kept that in mind when structuring the book.
September 17, 2023
I've never seen academic resources that I thought did a good job teaching patterns and such in algos. For that, I'd recommend interview prep material.
I'd recommend "Elements of Programming Interviews" (EPI) over "Cracking the Coding Interview" (CtCI): I think EPI does a better job of systematizing the learning process. While CtCI covers more ground, EPI is focused more on algos and data structs. This focus also comes across in how it presents material on algos and data structs: Instead of being more an exhaustive word dump, it focuses on relevant topics that provide a systematic approach to solving problems. Also, it has many strata of problems such that you can start with the easiest and most generally applicable problems then work your way up to harder and more esoteric problems.
I'd recommend "Elements of Programming Interviews" (EPI) over "Cracking the Coding Interview" (CtCI): I think EPI does a better job of systematizing the learning process. While CtCI covers more ground, EPI is focused more on algos and data structs. This focus also comes across in how it presents material on algos and data structs: Instead of being more an exhaustive word dump, it focuses on relevant topics that provide a systematic approach to solving problems. Also, it has many strata of problems such that you can start with the easiest and most generally applicable problems then work your way up to harder and more esoteric problems.
November 30, 2021
The best book for difficult interview questions. The only one I think can adequately prepare you for FAANG. Good selection of programming language-specific topics covered, and a lot of tricky algorithms you might not encounter elsewhere. My only complaint is the coding style sometimes becomes incredibly hard to read, from a combination of strange code (using a list with 1 element as a global variable across functions) and trying to be overly clever (lots of nested functions, nested list comprehensions, etc.).
December 6, 2020
Very helpful for the programming interviews at big tech companies. Give yourself plenty of time to go through the book—I recommend at least one month. It probably will take you 3 months of continuous learning to go through the book in its entirety, but even going through 1/3 of the problems (use the chart in book to see which ones these are) will be immensely useful for identifying problem types and getting a feel of pythonic solutions.
November 29, 2022
This is the best resource that I've found for high-quality programming interview problems. The contents is voluminous and comprehensive, and the format of brief topical refreshers followed by several examples worked well for me. I also appreciate the high-quality analyses and solutions, compared to the more hit-or-miss content available through popular sites such as LeetCode. I plan to return to this book as-needed to refresh for future interviews.
August 3, 2019
Hands down the best book that contains Python solutions to all sorts of coding interview questions. Questions are just like in the interview setting, vague and broad, but the authors really did a great job iterating from the brute force to the optimal solution.
Note - Beginners beware, the book is NOT meant for novice programmers.
Note - Beginners beware, the book is NOT meant for novice programmers.
August 3, 2022
Simply fantastic! Way more structured and curated by doing random Leetcode problems in my opinion. I gained a lot of confidence after finishing all the problems in this book. Recommending this to everyone preparing tech interviews.
May 13, 2019
Concise explanations of most commonly questioned Python programming interviews.
July 28, 2021
Need to read again. Well compiled.
September 12, 2021
This book is just the best.
November 22, 2021
best book to crack the coding interview .giving it 5 stars for now. I will read a few more and do a comparison
February 13, 2022
nothing special yet
May 9, 2022
This is, without a doubt, the best book to prepare for technical interviews and a very nice complement to webs like leetcode.com. It has helped me land two big tech offers.
December 31, 2022
Chapter 2,3 are must read!
February 10, 2023
Stop reading reviews and go grind leetcode
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews