When you buy a one year subscription to AlgoExpert you get access to their data structures crash course which consists of 13 15-20 minute videos. They introduce a few important concepts like memory, big O notation, and a few of the most popular data structures all within the context of how they come up in coding interviews.
After completing the crash course you walk away with a baseline understanding of these topics. Just enough to get you started but still a very limited grasp. Almost like a toy mental model for how these thing probably work. I have no background in the field so I cannot speak to the correctness or depth of what I learned. But I will say that it was all new to me and got me up and running on the problem sets in a comfortable way.
I am someone who has never really considered how memory works inside my computer, or if I have it was only briefly. I suppose I know there is a limited amount of it and there is rewriting that goes on, but that is pretty much it. Seeing how lists and arrays are stored in memory and how that can effect the speed of simplify calling an element in those data structures was pretty enlightening.
Even though this is a very much a surface level introduction I came away feeling like I had gained a new appreciation for what exactly all this code optimization is about.
The real meat of AlgoExpert is in the questions though, so do not purchase it thinking you will get value out of these videos. You are much better off watching free videos on YouTube that cover the same stuff.
Overall the videos are good and they fit well into the platform. Watching them gave me the background info I needed to understand the how the solutions work in the problem sets, and what more could you ask for really?
Pros: Took me from knowing nothing to having a surface level understanding of data structures and why working with them matters. Also instilled a level of interest. I did not feel bored watching these videos and instead am now eager to learn more.
Cons: Very very basic I can only see this being useful for those of us who know absolutely nothing about this subject.