[InfinityByTen]

I hope you meant it sarcastically.

I genuinely don't find it fun to solve puzzles unless they have an application/ end goal in mind. Tell me to find cycles in a graph as a puzzle and I'll roll my eyes. It's worse if you ask me to do a topological sort for detecting cycles using some named algorithm.

Ask me maybe to verify that a CI verification sequence is valid, I'll probably be interested.

I understand that leetcode problems can be abstractions of everyday problems you might deal with at work. But I find them too academic, robbing people of rich context of actual problems. They don't teach you about how to draw equivalences between actual problems and their models.

[TrackerFF]

They are fun if you're into competitive programming.

But most people aren't, not even developers, so they probably take people straight back to school days and anxiety inducing exams.

[InfinityByTen]

That's exactly why they don't make much sense as an interview process. You don't need to be thrilled by puzzles to be an effective developer. Also if you reach the goal of solving problems by memorization, I'd be more concerned about how you communicate about your ideas to others and write code that's understandable and maintainable.