Forem: Kriti

Thoughts on DSA and math as we have been taught since years...

Kriti — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 07:00:47 +0000

I’ve been thinking about something lately — and I don’t fully have it figured out yet, so this is more like me thinking out loud than giving advice.

Every time there’s an interview coming up, I go back to Striver’s sheet and start from the beginning. Again. Solve problems I’ve already solved. While solving I’m like “haan this I know”… but give it a couple weeks and it’s gone. Not just the code — sometimes even the approach.

And then I’m back to square one.

I think the issue (at least for me) is how I’m learning DSA.

It’s very pattern-based.

Like:

this is sliding window
this is prefix sum
this is two pointers

And the whole game becomes:

«“Can I recognize this pattern from the question?”»

But the moment the question is even slightly twisted… brain just goes:

«nope 👍»

But when we were kids, we didn’t learn like this.

Math wasn’t abstract.

It was:

apples
money
counting things around us

You could see it.

Now it’s all:

symbols
tricks
patterns

And somewhere along the way, we stopped seeing it in real life.

Even though it’s probably still there.

So I had this thought (again, not a solution, just a thought):

Instead of doing

«question → pattern»

What if we try

«pattern → where does this exist in real life?»

Like instead of recognizing patterns in problems…
recognize problems in patterns.

Example 1: Subarray Sum = K

Normally my brain goes:

«prefix sum + hashmap 👍 done»

Also my brain 2 weeks later:

«what hashmap?? 😭»

Now think of it like this:

You’re monitoring CPU usage over time. Every second you log usage.

Sometimes it spikes to 90%, and whenever that happens, the system triggers a reset.

Now you’re debugging.

You want to find:

«which continuous time window caused this spike?»

So you’re basically:

accumulating usage
scanning through time
trying to find a continuous chunk where total = 90

The moment you find it → that’s your culprit → that’s your reset trigger.

That’s literally:

«subarray sum = k»

But here it feels less like:

«“apply pattern”»

and more like:

«“yeah this is what I’d naturally do”»

Example 2: Minimum Window Substring

Again, usual approach:

«sliding window, freq map, shrink when valid»

Also usual result:

«forgotten in 10 days 💀»

Now imagine:

You’re cooking.

You have a long list of ingredients available (that’s "s")
You have a recipe that needs specific ingredients (that’s "t")

Your goal:

«find the smallest portion of your available ingredients that still contains everything needed»

So what do you do?

keep picking ingredients
check: “do I have everything?”
if yes → try removing extra stuff
keep shrinking till it’s just enough

That’s literally:

«expand → satisfy → shrink → optimize»

But it feels like common sense instead of some “technique”.

What I’m Trying to Get At

Maybe the issue isn’t:

lack of practice
or bad memory

Maybe it’s this:

«I’m trying to remember patterns I never actually experienced»

The Shift I Want to Try

Instead of asking:

«“which pattern is this?”»

Maybe ask:

«“where would this happen in real life?”»

I don’t know if this works yet.

But it feels like it might stick better than:

grinding the same sheet
restarting before every interview
pretending I “know” something I clearly don’t remember later

I’m going to try this with a few more problems.

Worst case: nothing changes
Best case: I finally stop restarting Striver from day 1 every time 😭

If you have tried something like this which works for you, do let me know in the comments!

Happy Pi Day!! 🥧 (And how I sorta like Tau better)

Kriti — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 08:15:48 +0000

I was waiting for Pi day ever since March started and now that its here, I totally forgot about it!

I remember that when I was little I watched a video by ViHart (who is sadly no longer on YouTube anymore, but I urge you guys to watch her videos, they're awesome. She taught me hexaflexagons, and infinities and many more things link).

Yeah so in that video, ViHart talked about how Tau is much better than Pi.

And what is even Tau, you may ask, its actually

τ = 2π

And why is it better, you may ask. Well, you know Pi has been the OG math symbol for all children and adults alike so now if someone comes along saying so 2π is better that's almost like saying no 1 is no longer the first number we would like 3 to be the first number.

But actually there are many reasons why Tau is better, for instance, we define Pi as

π = circumference / diameter

circumference = π × diameter

But since

diameter = 2r

we rewrite it as

circumference = 2πr

But really had just Tau been there we could easily have used circumference as

circumference = τr

which is much more easier to understand by children just beginning to learn about it!

But dont take it from me, take it from Numberphile and many other math youtubers (that's where I get all my nerd thoughts from :))

So yeah, Happy Pi Day I guess....

Seemingly small and useless habits...

Kriti — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 16:06:23 +0000

The skill of touch-typing

Above is my most recent wpm(words per minute) score on a new and different keyboard with "bubble" keys. I had learnt touch-typing just before entering college, only because my friend was preparing for an administrative course which required her to have this and I gave her company as a fellow learner with her.

This turned out to be my most cherished method of spending my time till date. I signed into a touch typing website and did all their assignments. I had never thought that this thing would have so many nuances really! How to reach numbers, how to capitalize letters in between sentences, special character, punctuations, its endless! And there is left handed touch typing and right handed touch typing as well now, which is even more awesome (I tried to learn left handed typing for when I am eating but it was too hard and I left it in between)

But yeah, this post is to encourage everyone to try to learn that skill which they have been postponing because of its seemingly useless nature. I'd say to fill up your bucket list of skills with as many as possible (I know everyone has one) because they are the most fun.

And you never know when they may come in handy ;)

PS: List of touch typing websites I swear by

Result of 7 Day Soft Challenge: Week 1!!

Kriti — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 05:29:16 +0000

Recently I had started a 7 day soft challenge, my slowed down version of the 75 day hard challenge and here are my results throughout the week. Article Link

On day 1, I opened my Striver's sheet which is around 54% completed since last year, and stared at it for a few minutes. Because I hadn't done any coding for a couple of months even the super easy questions seem hard there. And my biggest pet peev is when I know the solution but I'm not able to implement it perfectly and some edge case or a little bit wrong while condition or a >= is missed. So I opened NeetCode250, and filtered to the most easy array problems and then shifted to other topic's easy problems.

So the goal of this challenge was not to improve my dsa skills, but to improve my consistency, and mild problem solving. Initially when we start again after a long break, its quite frustrating because, you know you can do and have done even more difficult questions but you are not able to do a simple two pointer easy question without explaining your solution to chatGPT and making him write the code.

As I said the goal is not to scale myself broader but deeper, doing end to end questions myself, without asking gpt, "what is the bug here", or "no dont give another solution, correct my code" This soft challenge is vertical scaling in action.

So the results are as follows,
Day 1: 5 easy array problems
Day 2: 1 array problem
Day 3: 3 array / two pointer problems
Day 4: 1 easy two pointer
Day 5: 1 easy two pointer
Day 6: Completely forgot to solve
Day 7: 3 easy two pointer and sliding window problems

This may not seem like a huge deal but to me its a week very well spent...😊

ONTO ANOTHER 7 DAY (soft) CHALLENGE!!

Introducing: 7 Days Soft Challenge...

Kriti — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 05:53:29 +0000

I remember a little while ago this "75 Day Hard Challenge" really took the world in a wave. Everyone was doing these challenges, 75 day hard placement challenge, 75 day hard dsa challenge, 75 day hard proposing to your crush challenge.... and so on and so on....

I had never attempted to do it because I'm just not the kind of person who can do something for 75 days straight without ever doing it before. I am a seriously compounded person, and a little lazy as well. First for one day then I stop then 2 days streak then stop, then 4 days streak then stop.... And keeping up like this making small but consistent habits.

But I haven't invented this method. In reality, all strong things in the world which have depth and meaning are made like this. Nature works very very slowly, but it grows everyday. The human body, taking nutrients consistently everyday and a small baby grows into a full size human, without even us realising. Actually all growth happens under the hoods. I thinkn when we study everyday then the actually growth happens in our subconscious brain when we sleep. And if we keep doing it everyday everyday then it becomes a ridge in our brain and goes very very deep.

But don't listen to me, take it from James Clear, author of Atomic Habits who says that,

Small, daily 1% improvements (atomic habits) compound over time to create massive, transformative lifestyle changes, emphasizing that you do not rise to the level of your goals, but rather fall to the level of your systems.

So I wanted to do this 7 day soft dsa challenge, where I will solve easy problems but consistently, hoping to have this problem solving skill not just as an ornament but as an identity...

Diary of a Software Developer

Kriti — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 08:56:37 +0000

🚕 A Cab Ride, Dev Blogs, and Feeding the Builder’s Brain

A few days ago I was travelling in a cab and doing nothing, so I thought to read some dev blogs here and there. I came across GitHub's blog on Semantic code searching (which I thought was the most awesome thing ever, why didn't I ever think of that) I mean think about it, whether its locally or online, getting code snippet outputs for a natural laguage query is so awesome. It's almost like RAG but instead of textual context we give code context and then ask questions. Pretty cool if you ask me.

🔗 Article link:

https://github.blog/ai-and-ml/machine-learning/towards-natural-language-semantic-code-search/

Then I thought that why don't I read more tech blogs, I mean, I think most cs students like me spend much of their time just sitting, waiting for a groundbreaking idea to come up in our heads. We think that we can't think of anything cool, so we don't feel the urge to build anything else. But how will you get ideas unless you feed your brain some food on what good ideas look and feel like.

A good writer is someone who has read much much more than he has written. Writers read so much stuff that they can't contain it and then it flows. Similarly when you read about what other people have built, you will have so many ideas that you won't be able to contain them, and then a builder will born.

I'm drifting away from the topic.... After these a few more of these blogs, I thought I would like to read how a good engineer thinks in his daily life, so I googled "Diary of a Software Developer" but I didn't get too many things. So I thought why not we should make our own?? I have read many other people also suggesting that everyone should have their own software journal. So here are my two cents of thoughts as a diary entry.

To keep myself accountable...

Kriti — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 13:19:34 +0000

Lately I’ve been feeling that doing one solid, deep project teaches more than doing many small ones.

So I’m planning to build a key–value store, starting from scratch. First something very basic, then slowly adding features as I learn.

Not trying to build the next Redis or anything. The goal is just to understand how these systems actually work internally.

Posting this mainly to keep myself disciplined and consistent.
No deadlines, no big claims, just learning by building.

If you’ve worked on something similar or have advice, I’d love to hear it.

This is my software journey

Kriti — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 11:18:20 +0000

🚀 This Is My Software Journey

Hey everyone 👋
I’ve finally decided to start writing about my software engineering and learning journey. I wanted a space to share what I build, learn, and experiment with, without making it sound like a résumé update or a “big announcement.” So here goes.

🧩 Where It Started

Ever since first year in college, I’ve always been curious about how things actually work under the hood, from how networks move data to what makes an operating system boot up. That curiosity got me into software engineering.

Over time, I’ve explored a mix of areas:

Cryptography and security
Machine learning and NLP
Operating systems and systems programming
Network science and graph theory
Leetcode/CSES/CF/CC

But my main goal now is to implement everything I’ve studied so far, not just learn it in theory.
I want to understand how computer networks really work, experiment with all the layers, maybe even build a small database of my own (lol), and just keep pushing my understanding through hands-on projects.

⚙️ What I’ll Be Writing Here

This blog is going to be an open record of that process — expect posts about:

Projects I’m building and how I approach them
Experiments with systems, crypto, ML, and networks
Lessons learned while implementing concepts from scratch
Notes, bugs, and small insights that might help someone else trying the same

I’m also trying to get into the open-source space. Contributing to real projects and learning from the community. If you’ve been there or are just starting out too, I’d love to connect and learn together.

💭 Why Now

I realized that learning alone hits a ceiling. Writing about what I learn (and getting feedback) feels like the best way to grow.
So here’s the start.
A blank page, a few side projects, and a lot of curiosity to build things from the ground up.

Thanks for reading!
If you’re also documenting your journey, working on open source, or just experimenting with systems and networks, I’d love to hear from you 👇