LeetCode Made Coding Fun Again

Many of us have already fully switched to AI-powered development. We write specs, create skills, connect MCP and run several agents in the background, after which we do a very boring code review of the result.

For almost all of this year I’ve been writing code with the help of AI, and it’s definitely productive (otherwise I wouldn’t be doing it), but it’s not as fun as it was before. Writing code is like LEGO or puzzles, first you come up with what the solution should look like, then what the first steps should be, and then you write the code, some things work right away, and some things break along the way and you rewrite what doesn’t work. And now imagine if you asked a robot to put a puzzle together for you. It’s put together, the result is there, but did you enjoy it?

I’ve heard an opinion from other developers, “Then write code without AI, what’s the problem?”, but unfortunately it’s not a solution. I think you’ve played computer games like GTA SA, where you can enter the cheat code “HESOYAM” and get a huge amount of money right away. Will you be just as motivated to earn this money in the game honestly, if you’ve used this cheat code once? Most likely not. You’ll consider it a waste of time, because you can just type a command. It’s the same with AI development. It’s very hard to make yourself sit down again and do everything by hand, when you can write a prompt and an AI agent will do it for you.

And for some time it was really sad for me. On the one hand, AI lets us be productive, make PoCs quickly and get rid of boring routine work, but on the other hand it takes away the reason why many of us fell in love with programming.

When I was just starting to learn programming in 2016-2017, I really loved challenges (I still love them, but back then it was especially important). When our C++ teacher gave us a problem on algorithms or data structures, I wanted to do it better and faster than all my classmates. It was a competition. And solving some of the problems took several days (or rather sleepless nights), for example tic-tac-toe where you play against artificial intelligence (so-called, not an LLM), or the 15 puzzle in the console.

When we finished with C++, I switched to Java/C#, where I was focused more on OOP, frameworks and patterns than on algorithms. And after that I never went back to them (except for a few tasks at work, when they really came in handy).

And now, in 2026, I’ve started solving problems on LeetCode, and it has literally taken me back to the time when it was interesting for me to write code where you had to think about algorithms, look for optimal solutions (like O(1) memory and O(n) time), and write everything yourself. Now it has become my hobby.

Some of you might think, “Why doesn’t AI get in the way of enjoying LeetCode too?” On LeetCode nobody needs the finished solution, only the process matters. Asking AI to solve a problem there is like asking a robot to put together a puzzle that you bought for fun.

I ignored LeetCode for a long time, because programming at work was enough for me. Now, when AI writes the code at work, LeetCode has become a place where I can get a challenge again.

As for the platform itself, LeetCode is not the only one you can use (it’s just one of the most popular). You can also use Codeforces, Codewars and so on.

Also, I want to mention “Advent of Code”, which is an annual event (every December) where you solve interesting programming puzzles. Here you move forward through the story and face really varied problems.