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  • I blank out in Solidity interviews — how do you prepare for code review and optimization tasks?

    AlexDeveloper

    AlexDeveloper

    @Alexdeveloper
    Updated: Dec 6, 2025
    Views: 2.9K

    I’m preparing for junior smart contract developer roles, and I’m consistently struggling with the Solidity code-review part of the interview.

    Whenever an interviewer drops a simple staking or ERC20 contract and says, “Find the bugs,” my brain just freezes. I know the usual concepts — reentrancy patterns, storage/memory rules, unchecked external calls, gas optimization basics — but during a live review I blank out and miss even obvious issues.

    Sometimes I overthink and end up rewriting everything. Other times I forget simple heuristics like validating state changes before transfers or checking for missing access control.

    If you’ve gone through this phase, how did you train yourself to review Solidity code faster and with more confidence? Any exercises, GitHub repos, bug-hunting drills, or even funny fails that helped you improve your pattern recognition?

    Would really appreciate practical tips, routines, and interview-safe strategies.

    3
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  • Damon Whitney

    @CareerSensei • 9mos

    I’ve interviewed 120+ junior Solidity candidates, and freezing during live code review is extremely common. Solidity isn’t hard because of syntax — it’s hard because your brain must detect patterns quickly. What helped most juniors rise is adopting a fixed audit checklist rather than reading code line-by-line.

    For example, I tell candidates to scan in this order:

    1. Access control (who can call what?)

    2. State changes (before/after external calls)

    3. Math & accounting (underflows, fee logic, reward drifts)

    4. External calls (call vs delegatecall, missing checks)

    5. Gas drains (loops, unnecessary storage writes)

    Once this becomes muscle memory, your brain stops panicking because you’re not “improvising” — you’re executing a routine.

    You can also practice with real audit reports from Code4rena or Sherlock. Take a random contract, set a 10-minute timer, and force yourself to spot anything, even if small. This builds fast-scan confidence.

  • Ashutosh sharma

    @XMqbbH1 • 9mos

    start practice on codehawks bug bounty programme , this will help you in practical leaarning

  • RubenzkArchitect

    @zkArchitect • 3d

    Your issue is not knowledge — it’s pattern recognition lag. Solidity interviews often test whether you can spot high-signal issues quickly, not whether you can explain the entire contract.

    What helped me early on was doing “bug sprints.” I downloaded 20 flawed ERC20 contracts from public repos, printed them on paper, and circled suspicious sections without overthinking. After 2–3 weeks, I noticed I was instantly detecting common red flags: missing zero-address checks, faulty allowance logic, unsafe external calls, lack of event emissions, etc.

    Another underrated trick: reverse-engineering audit reports. Take any published audit, hide the findings, try to guess them, then compare. It rewires your brain to think like an auditor.

    And don’t underestimate interview pressure. Many candidates feel their IQ drops by 20% when someone is watching.

    Practice timed mock reviews with friends or even GPT-generated flawed contracts — confidence is quietly built through repetitions, not theory.

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