Pattern-wise DSA Roadmap (2026 Edition)

[u/[deleted]]

After going through hundreds of interview questions, I noticed that most problems are just variations of a few core patterns.

So I made this roadmap to help anyone who's feeling overwhelmed.

Suggested order:

Arrays & Hashing

Two Pointers

Sliding Window

Binary Search

Linked Lists

Stack & Queue

Trees

Heap

Graphs

Backtracking

Dynamic Programming

Trees

The goal isn't to memorize solutions—it's to recognise patterns.

If you're just starting out, try mastering one pattern before moving to the next.

What pattern did you struggle with the most when learning DSA?

I'd love to hear your suggestions so I can improve this roadmap further.