LONGEST PATH WITH DIFFERENT ADJACENT CHARACTERS | LEETCODE 2246 | PYTHON DFS SOLUTION

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In this video we are solving a Hard level Microsoft interview question dealing with graphs: Longest Path with Different Adjacent Characters (Leetcode 2246).
This question is actually not that hard for a hard level question, it really should be more of a medium. I'm not sure why it's rated a hard when there are medium tree questions that are more difficult. It's one of those problems where you need to build a graph from some input and then perform a traversal on that graph to get the final solution.
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Intro
00:20 Question Prompt
01:05 Basic Example
02:35 Solution Intuition
06:20 Coding
10:28 Time/Space Complexity
11:15 Outro

[@laumatthew71]

Very clear explanation on the algorithm, thank you ! One thing to add potentially in the video is a run through of the algorithm on a particular example, this may help visualize the algorithm more clearly :)

[@sak4531]

Dude you are pretty Good!! I think you are on the same levels of NeetCode (another youtuber). DON'T STOP MAKING VIDEOS!!

[@YT.Nikolay]

It's gonna be long path :) thanks for the video!

[@MP-ny3ep]

Thank you awesome solution

[@subee128]

Thank you

[@rsKayiira]

thank you for the video

[@keerthivasan138]

The Hard Part is figuring out to calculate two paths at each node and updating the result and only passing the longest one to the parent(which is not intutive for me) thanks for your video explanation

[@azirettoktoraliev1645]

thank you man, hope you aren't going to vanish like other youtubers do

[@crackfaang]

I hope more people watch so I have a reason to make videos 😂

[@skyacaniadev2229]

My answer feels like crap comparing to yours. Got so much to learn from you. 😂

[@CostaKazistov]

Good explanation. White background for code editor is a terrible choice though. It is so much more pleasant to code on a dark theme background.

[@GunalanDeivaganpathy]

intuition is not clear tbh

[@bouzie8000]

This largest, second largest intuition isn't making sense to me. I assumed we'd be able to solve this by thinking each node would implicitly store its max length. And then we'll have the condition that checks whether the child node == parent node. If not, we add the length and then check for the max and store it. But everyone's solution online seems to be working with computing a 'second largest' length which is confusing to me

[@bouzie8000]

Ahh I've come up with my rationale for it: We are not concerned with the node itself (except when we're checking if it's equal to the parent), but more so the edge count. So each node can have an implicit max path associated with it (which can be child a->node itself->child b). To know which two children are involved in this max path, it will definitely have to be the child with the associated longest path and the child with the associated second longest path

[@danianiazi8229]

can someone please explain the working and swapping of longes ans second longest

[@crackfaang]

Say longest is 5, and second longest is 2. Now you receive a path length of 10. The longest is now 10, and the second longest is now the old longest (5). But let's say you had 5 as the longest, 2 as the second longest again and now you receive a path length of 3. Longest is still 5, but second longest is now 3.

[@bostonlights2749]

Comment for better reach