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

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 i