CodingMediumcod-g517

Subject Dynamic programming 2dLevel Mid–Senior~25 minCommon in Algorithms & data structures interviewsIndustries Software development

Question

A row of houses must each be painted one of k colors. costs[i][j] is the cost to paint house i with color j. No two adjacent houses may share a color. Return the minimum total cost to paint all houses. costs has at least one color column when non-empty; it may be empty.

Implement

paint_house_k(costs: list[list[int]]) → int

Examples

in[[[1,5,3],[2,9,4]]]out5

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.