Code Room
CodingHardcod-g530
Subject Interval dpLevel Senior–Staff~35 minCommon in Algorithms & data structures interviewsIndustries Software development

Question

Given positive integer balloon values, you burst them one by one. Bursting balloon i earns left * value[i] * right coins, where left and right are the values of the adjacent surviving balloons (treat out-of-range neighbors as 1). After bursting, neighbors become adjacent. Return the maximum coins from bursting all balloons. The list has at least one balloon.

Implement
burst_balloons(nums: list[int]) → int
Examples
in[[3,1,5,8]]out167
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.

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.