Question
You are given balloons in a row with values 'nums'. Each time you burst balloon i you gain nums[left] * nums[i] * nums[right] coins, where left and right are the nearest unburst neighbors at that moment (treat values past the ends as 1). Burst all balloons, in any order, to maximize the total coins. Return the maximum coins. 1 <= len(nums) <= 300, 0 <= nums[i] <= 100.
burst_balloons(nums: list[int]) → int[[3,1,5,8]]out167State 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.