Stop Fearing the Whiteboard. Conquer It.

The article says whiteboard interviews should be faced as a required part of many hiring processes. Its approach is to learn the basics, practice writing code by hand, and use coding challenges to get comfortable with the format.

Reading notes

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• Whiteboard interviews are presented as a common requirement in many organizations, so the author recommends treating them as a hurdle to prepare for rather than argue against.
• The first step is to learn core basics such as data structures, Big O, and sorting.
• The article lists strings, arrays, lists, linked lists, stacks, queues, trees, graphs, binary trees, and hash tables as data structures to know at a basic level.
• It also names time complexity, space complexity, and recursion under Big O.
• The sorting algorithms listed are bubble sort, insertion sort, merge sort, and quick sort.
• To study these topics, the author recommends Algorithms Illuminated Part 1 and chapters 1-6 and 10 of Cracking the Coding Interview.
• Two courses are suggested for faster coverage of the same material: Algorithms and Data Structures Part 1 and Part 2.
• The second step is to write code out by hand with pen and paper, preferably on a whiteboard, to strengthen focus and practice explaining ideas without an IDE.
• The article says this kind of practice helps with concentration, distance from editors, and thinking while writing.
• The third step is to solve practice problems over and over, with Project Euler, Hacker Rank, and LeetCode named as places to do that.
• The closing advice is to follow the plan, keep practicing, and arrive at the interview comfortable with the whiteboard format.