Udacity: Technical Interview, Algorithms and Data Structures in Python Review

Technical Interview, Algorithms and Data Structures in Python is a free programming course offered by Udacity intended to prepare students for the technical interview process. More specifically, the course focuses on teaching students basic topics in data structures and algorithms that may come up in technical interviews. The only prerequisites for the course are basic Python and math skills and although there are a few quizzes, they are optional so you can complete it simply by going through all the lectures and readings.


Despite it's name, Technical Interview is more of an introduction to algorithms than a course about technical interviews. The course has 8 topic sections: introduction to efficiency, list-based collections, searching and sorting, maps and hashing, trees, graphs, algorithm case studies and interview techniques. Lecture content is presented well and broken down into small easily digestible segments. Despite having 8 topic sections with 10-15 lesson segments apiece, most sections have less than 30 minutes of lecture content, so you move along quickly. Since each section is so short, there really isn't enough time to go into anything in great detail: the course mostly covers a few of the most common or important topics in each subject area and then moves on. The final section on the interview process goes through a single mock technical interview question from start to finish.


Technical Interview, is a fine course for learning about or refreshing on Python data structures and basic algorithms, but it lacks of the depth of a serious algorithms course and spends too little time on the technical interview process. If this is your first course on data structures and algorithms it may move from one topic to another faster than is ideal and without robust programming assignments you won't get the hands on experience necessary to gain comfort with the topics presented. If this course were your only background, you'd probably struggle to handle a mock interview question like the one presented in the final lesson in a live interview. It does, however, offer live mock interview practice through their partnered course provider, Pramp. Using Pramp is probably the most valuable experience you'll get out of the course if you decide to try it, but since it is not technically a part of the course content itself, I'm can't take it into account in my rating for the course.

This course would be better off split into 2 parts: a full, in depth course on algorithms and data structures with a more robust programming component and a 2-4 week course focused on technical interviews with at least some mock interview practice that doesn't require you to go through a different website.


I give Technical Interview, Algorithms and Data Structures in Python 3 out of 5 stars: Okay.