Mental Model (part 3) · Data Structures Interview Q&A tutorial

Exercises for this step

This lesson explains the ideas. The matching GitHub folder has exercises and notes—open it, try the prompts, then come back here for the framing.

Open snapshot on GitHub

fcc-interview-data-structures/03-Mental-Model

Run locally

git clone https://github.com/michaeldunga1/fcc-interview-data-structures.git
cd fcc-interview-data-structures/03-Mental-Model
cat README.md
# complete exercises.md

Goal for this part

Build a clear mental model of data structure interviews.

Treat 03-Mental-Model as the source of truth for this checkpoint.

What you should already know

You can open a terminal and edit text files
You can read a short design prompt and write notes
Earlier parts of this course are complete when this is not part 1

Checkpoint

You can explain the goal of this part in one sentence
The snapshot folder README commands complete without mystery errors
You know what changed versus the previous part

Common pitfalls

Running commands from the repo root instead of 03-Mental-Model
Skipping the README prerequisites for this snapshot
Mixing files from a later part into an earlier folder
Moving on before the checkpoint list above is true