CodingMediumcod-g257

Subject Advanced dpLevel Mid–Senior~25 minCommon in Algorithms & data structures interviewsIndustries Software development

Question

Houses are arranged in a circle; house i holds nums[i] coins. You cannot rob two adjacent houses (and house 0 is adjacent to house n-1). You must rob at least one house. Return the maximum coins you can collect. 1 <= n <= 2000, 0 <= nums[i] <= 10^4.

Implement

rob_circle(nums: list[int]) → int

Examples

in[[2,3,2]]out3

What a strong answer looks like

State your approach and its time/space complexity out loud before you optimize. Handle the edge cases (empty input, duplicates, overflow), and say why you chose this over the brute force. Green tests are the floor, not the grade.

Learn the concepts

Vibe coding: describe the solution in plain language (or narrate it) and the coach grades your approach. Generating runnable code from your description is coming next.

Run or narrate your approach, then ask the coach.