I mean usually they will check DS and Algo knowledge directly in interviews. More on reddit.com

With Links to everything: Elements of Statistical Learning: http://statweb.stanford.edu/~tibs/ElemStatLearn/printings/ESLII_print10.pdf Andrew Ng's Coursera Course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning/home/info The Deep Learning Book: https://www.deeplearningbook.org/front_matter.pdf Put tensor flow or torch on a linux box and run examples: http://cs231n.github.io/aws-tutorial/ Keep up with the research: https://arxiv.org Resume Filler - Kaggle Competitions: https://www.kaggle.com More on reddit.com

The most useful language tool in competitive programming is a powerful standard library and toolkit filled with common data structures and algorithms. You don't want to be building a linked list from scratch every time. Java's built-in library is much more extensive than C++'s, and in that sense, it's much better for competitive programming. However, there's no reason a competitor can't use common C++ standard libraries to make up for that language shortcoming, which puts them on even footing again. Now, some competitive programming problems come down to a difference of seconds for problems with a lot of zeroes, and for raw mathematical calculation speed, C++ is usually better than Java, so that's a point for C++. On the other hand, debugging coding errors can frequently take longer in C++ than in in Java, but for the top competitive programmers, if you're spending time debugging, you've already lost, so that's less of a big deal. Similarly, for raw typing speed: Java's a bit more verbose than C++, which is a small speed cost. Really they're both fine. C++ is common. Java is seen sometimes. Personally I prefer Python. The most important thing is how proficient YOU are with that language, not how good the language could be in theory. More on reddit.com

Take the following opinion with a grain of salt: Your time would be better spent working on a python project that is appropriate for your current skill level and that you care about. Anki is great for memorizing and maintaining facts but doing so isn't particularly valuable for learning a programming language (assuming you a good internet connection) . More on reddit.com