
In short: EPI is a highly technical book that is well-suited for anyone looking to prepare for technical coding questions that revolve around data structures and algorithms. The book also offers concrete tips and tricks for solving specific types of coding problems, and includes a cheatsheet to help ace technical questions. The types of technical coding questions vary widely from string manipulation to graph traversals.

The book itself is highly technical in nature and deep dives into fundamental computer science.


The authors have very strong technical backgrounds, and this is evidenced by the technical focus in the contents of the book. If you’re looking for a position as a software engineer, this book will have something for you.ĮPI was written by 3 folks who’ve worked across some of the best-known tech companies in the world, the likes of Facebook, Google, Uber, and Microsoft. Elements of Programming Interviews What is this book about?ĮPI is a book that focuses on preparing for technical software engineering interview questions that are commonly asked at tech companies. In today’s book review, I go over in detail the good and the bad of one of the top-selling books on Amazon for technical coding interviews: Elements of Programming Interviews (a.k.a EPI, and it’ll be referred to as such in the rest of this article). If you’re looking for a book that will teach you how to solve any coding question, guides you on how to design something like Instagram that scales to a billion users, and makes your sandwich while you’re at it, then this book definitely isn’t it.īut for polishing your technical chops and making sure you’re well prepared to face the programming challenges in an interview, this book comes darn close to it.

It can sometimes be a daunting task to navigate all the technical coding preparation resources available online, and one might ask: is there a single book/resource that best prepares for technical coding interviews?īest, is relative of course in this case. Technical coding interviews are notoriously difficult - almost borderline quiz-like for those unprepared. Is this the best book for technical interviews?
