Coding Interview University is John Washam’s self-taught computer science study plan, the one he used to go from “no CS degree, working as a software developer” to a Software Development Engineer offer at Amazon in about eight months of full-time study. It’s a single long README that maps the entire CS undergraduate curriculum plus interview prep into a tickable checklist, with free resources for every topic.
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Coding Interview University: The honesty in the first paragraph
The README opens with a disclaimer: “You won’t need to study as much as I did. I wasted a lot of time on things I didn’t need to know.” That’s the most useful line in the whole repo. Washam spent months over-preparing on topics the modern interview loop barely touches (compiler internals, formal logic, EE-adjacent low-level systems). The plan has since been edited down to what actually moves the needle, but the warning stays: you don’t need to do the whole thing.
Read it as permission to skip. Skim the table of contents, mark the sections where you’re weak, and ignore the rest. Treating it as a checklist to complete top-to-bottom is the failure mode the author explicitly warns against.
The shape of the plan
The structure is: data structures first (arrays, linked lists, hash tables, trees, graphs, etc., each with a short video lecture and a “be able to implement from scratch” prompt), then algorithms (sorting, searching, DP, graph traversal), then systems topics (OS, networking, databases), then interview prep (LeetCode practice, system design, behavioral). Every line item links to a free video (mostly Berkeley / MIT OpenCourseWare / YouTube) or a short reading.
What it doesn’t have: code samples for the algorithm implementations. You’re expected to write them yourself with pen and paper, which is the point. The plan trains the muscle, not the reading comprehension.
Translations and community
The README has been translated into 15+ languages by the community (Japanese, Spanish, Chinese, Bengali, Vietnamese, Polish, Indonesian, Urdu, Marathi, others in progress). The English version is canonical; translations lag by months. If you’re studying in a non-English primary language, pair this with a translation but verify technical terms against the English original.
Who it’s for, who it’s not
Built for: career switchers without a CS degree, self-taught engineers wanting to fill CS gaps, anyone targeting FAANG-tier interviews where the bar includes the CS fundamentals. Not built for: bootcamp grads with 2 weeks to prep (use Tech Interview Handbook instead), experienced engineers brushing up (use Grind 75 alone), or anyone targeting startups that don’t run algorithmic interviews.
Coding Interview University is the overachiever’s path, the eight-month full-time study plan that actually worked for one person. Use it as a syllabus, not a to-do list, and trust the author’s own advice that you probably don’t need all of it.