Code Room
CodingHardcod-g714
Subject Dp on intervalsLevel Senior–Staff~35 minCommon in Algorithms & data structures interviewsIndustries Software development

Question

You have a row of colored balloons given as an array of positive integers. You burst them one at a time. When you burst balloon i, you gain left * nums[i] * right coins, where left and right are the values of the balloons immediately adjacent to i at the moment of bursting (a missing neighbor counts as 1). After bursting, its neighbors become adjacent. Return the maximum coins obtainable. Constraints: 1 <= length <= 300, 1 <= each value <= 100.

Implement
max_burst_coins(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.