One Developer's Honest Account of Struggling Through First 10 LeetCode Problems

An engineering student shared a candid journal of their early LeetCode experience, highlighting the anxiety and self-doubt that surrounds competitive coding during placement season. Their first 10 problems included a wrong answer on a Hello World function, a compile error, and one SQL problem that took five attempts to pass. Despite the stumbles, they eventually worked through beginner classics like Two Sum and Reverse String, earning accepted solutions after multiple tries. The writer argues that 'Easy' problems are only easy in hindsight, and that the number of attempts taken does not diminish the value of a final accepted answer. Their key advice is to measure progress against your own past performance rather than comparing yourself to peers with hundreds of problems solved.