GreatFrontEnd Review, is it worth it?

The SWE job market is quite tough right now and it's more important than ever to be as prepared as possible for interviews. With that said there are a ton of resources for preparing and it's quite hard to know which ones are good without a little bit of research.

I wanted to specifically talk about GreatFrontEnd (GFE) which seems to be one of the more popular platforms for frontend interview prep. Oddly enough I could not find a lot of high quality reviews of the platform. They do have testimonials, however I personally don't trust testimonials that are directly posted on the site itself.

I want to point out specifically that this is not a sponsored review, all opinions are my own.

So, is it worth it?

Let me get this out of the way: if you are preparing for frontend or fullstack roles, it is worth the cost. You need this platform in your prep strategy.

You can find other lists of practice questions scattered across the internet, but there doesn't seem to be a better place where they are all aggregated together, with high quality written solutions, and an actual code editor for practice.

Are there alternatives?

I did briefly look at other options. Below is a list of some of the resources I ran into:

• BFE.dev - it aims to be something similar to GFE, but honestly it does not look nearly as polished. I don't think the questions are particularly well curated and they don't seem to have the same editor and browser combo (for actual UI practice). It does seem to be largely free with a fairly cheap premium offering. Funny enough, they seem to be an affiliate of GFE and are also promoting it on their site.
• Front End Interview Handbook - It's mostly a static wiki-like resource. Completely free. But it appears to be written by the same team behind GFE. My guess is this was how GFE got started before it became the platform that it is today, and probably mostly still exists for SEO purposes (it links to GFE quite a bit).
• FrontendLead - not incredibly familiar with this platform. But I'm pretty sure it did not exist before GFE and is largely a clone.
  • Tip: click around the site and notice how incredibly slow it is. Just switch between the different question lists and you'll see loading skeletons quite a bit. Looking at the network tab, I'm seeing GraphQL requests that take 1 to 4 seconds. I doubt these lists change that often, why is it not cached? Now compare the same experience with GFE which renders each page instantly. I'm heavily judging here, but a frontend learning platform that doesn't know how to optimize their own frontend loading is... sketchy. Skip this one.

So this platform is perfect?

Not quite. In fact, as a frontend learning platform I would have expected it to have the best possible UI/UX, but there are gaps which I will go into more detail later in this post.

Which pricing plan should you pick?

That really depends on your needs. Personally, I think the lifetime plan is worth it if you anticipate likely needing to use the platform for the next couple of years.

However I do think you could get the most out of the platform with their annual or quarterly plan. Both of these include access to a private Discord server, which is a nice little community with fairly active members (who discuss their interview experiences).

Note that a good chunk of the content is actually free, I would recommend exploring it first.

What does the platform include?

At a high level, it's really just a bunch of interview problems and guides split between different types of questions. Below, I talk about each one and what I liked and didn't like about it.

Frontend Systems Design

Not to be confused with the more standard (backend) systems design interview, frontend systems design focuses more on constructing complex UI's or components. It's less about code or infrastructure, but more so the conversation around the things that you would optimize or opt for on a client application and the different trade-offs between your choices.

What's good

GFE gives you a solid solution framework which is written as an easy to remember acronym: RADIO. This framework is used throughout each system design solution to show you that the approach very much works for any problem.

There are several practice questions that cover a wide range of potential UI's ranging from smaller components, like a Poll Widget, to more complex pages like Facebook's News Feed.

The questions and the solutions (designs) are well written and seem to be backed by solid case studies and references. I found myself agreeing on most of the design decisions (that I had experience in) while also learning quite a bit of new stuff that I haven't encountered before.

If you are interviewing for Senior+ frontend roles, these are a must read.

What could be better

There are a few spots in some of the designs that I would argue is a bit outdated. For example, there is often a section about picking the correct rendering strategy (SSR vs CSR), or picking SPA vs MPA, etc. There are a lot of cases with these where the author opts for going too far in one or the other, when in reality with modern frameworks such as Next.js it is already the hybrid of these choices by default, where you can easily combine these approaches even on a single page.

There are also a lot of diagrams that look to be modeled after Model-View-Controller (MVC) even though modern frameworks like React are not necessarily based on MVC. You may find that your own mental model of the design does not match what is drawn.

With that said I have seen the GFE team acknowledge these opportunities of improvement and they have mentioned changes are coming.

What's bad

The platform, at the time of this writing, offers 19 practice systems design questions. However four of them are marked as coming soon and has not been updated in the past year (that I know of). There is no clear timeline on when these coming soon items would release.

User Interface Coding

This is GFE's bread and butter and is probably the most relevant for those preparing for interviews. These are basically various UI questions that you would solve using frameworks like React. They will test if you have your fundamentals in place in terms of actually knowing how to create user interfaces.

What's good

I've found from my own experience interviewing, when being evaluated for frontend, that these are the types of problems that are asked the most. In fact in a handful of interviews I was asked questions that seemed liked straight copies from GFE, or a slight variant.

The interface is similar to what you would expect in interview platforms like CoderPad and CodeSignal. You have access to a basic file system, a code editor, and are able to see your code changes easily on an emulated browser.

These problems do provide an official solution (in your framework of choice) which you can compare yours to.

Note that my review is mostly based on my experience with using React on these problems. I am not sure of the quality of solutions in the other frameworks.

What could be better

There are at times inconsistency in the editors. Sometimes it expects you to write JavaScript (.js React files), other times the editor is in TypeScript (.tsx files). This ideally should be a choice that I can actually pick.

This inconsistency also bleeds into the officially written solutions. Ideally everything should be in TypeScript, especially the solutions. Knowing how to model prop types in actual types/interfaces for example should be a fundamental React skill.

What's bad

There doesn't seem to be an automated test to verify that your solution meets all requirements, you must manually check. This is the one thing that I really wish was provided. It seems the platform already has the infrastructure in place to run Jest-like tests, it should at least have some basic Testing Library tests.

JavaScript Functions

JavaScript Functions are another type of coding problem set available in GFE. These are less about the UI and more about JavaScript fundamentals. You will be asked questions relating to implementing common utility functions or implementing standard classes or methods in the JavaScript language.

There are companies that care more about your ability to solve problems in JavaScript, and not just in specific frameworks like React. I find that you're likely to get questions like these when you are interviewing for a fullstack JS/TS role, where you often need to prove that your expertise in the language travels across the stack.

What's good

There's a great variety of questions that truly test your JavaScript fundamentals.

I found these to be much more "fun" than Leetcode-style questions as I felt like they were actually exposing gaps in my JavaScript fundamentals and not just forcing me to learn some obscure algorithm.

Also automated tests actually are provided to check your solutions.

Quiz questions

These are essentially trivia questions meant to test your understanding of various frontend or JavaScript topics. For example "Explain the concept of scope in JavaScript".

What could be better

These quiz pages are mostly static question & answers. It would have been much more valuable if they were actually in a form of a multiple-choice quiz, allowing the engineer to ponder what the answer could be before providing it.

What's bad

I personally did not find these questions valuable. I don't think the solutions really offer that much more than what you would find in MDN or similar sites and I don't think companies often ask these types of questions.

To me they just feel like unnecessary content that puts engineers at risk of attempting to memorize answers. The worst case is that companies might actually start asking more of these.

The core concepts from these questions ideally should already be baked into the other problem types.

Algorithmic Coding

The last type of problem set you'll find in GFE are composed of pretty much your standard Leetcode-style problem. I have spent the least amount of time on these as I think Leetcode itself already has this area covered.

What's good

If you don't have a Leetcode subscription this is nice to have in the same package as the other questions in GFE.

I also appreciate that the written solutions are very much focused on JS/TS since other platforms tend to focus on Python.

What could be better

I wish that GFE found a way to add a little more value in this area. HelloInterview for example also has their own DSA section which supplements Leetcode by having really nice visualizations.

What's bad

Given that Leetcode already dominates this area, it's a bit hard not to compare the two:

• Your submissions does not tell you if your solutions are actually fast in comparison to other people's solutions. This is maybe a nice to have, but how else would you know that your solution is way less efficient than others?
• I don't think there is a mechanism built-in to say that you exceeded a time limit (e.g. inefficient solutions). The platform ideally should just reject bad solutions.
• The test runner is not intuitive. It seems to run Jest-like tests and expects you to change the actual code that is executed if you want to modify inputs. Why not just offer an actual UI that allows you to input additional inputs rather than the need to write more code?

What do I wish the platform included?

Integrated Community Discussions

Unlike other platforms, there isn't an integrated community forum where you can submit and compare solutions. In Leetcode for example, every problem has it's own comments section and a dedicated Solutions forum.

In HelloInterview they have a nice Peer System Design Library where you can compare how others did their designs. There is also a comments section on every knowledge page.

GreatFrontEnd does have their own Discord server but the conversations are largely disconnected from the actual platform content.

Core Concepts

GreatFrontEnd at its core is very much a problem aggregator and a practice platform. However it is not a place to actually learn the fundamentals that you need to solve most of these problems.

At best you can deduce some of the common patterns that you see in solutions and maybe reverse engineer your way to learning these fundamentals, but it's not very efficient.

What I think the platform is lacking is perhaps just a set of core concepts that would fulfill your fundamentals before you tackle problems. At minimum I wish it gave me a list of things to review (even externally) before diving into problems.

For example, before we jump into systems design problems, why not cover common optimization topics? Image optimization for example is largely repeated in several design solutions, among other common topics. This is a good place to deploy DRY.

What about accessibility? It's another common system design optimization topic and is also usually incorporated in UI problem solutions (via proper use of ARIA). Surprisingly there is not a page in GFE that helps me prep the minimum accessibility knowledge that I should have for interviews.

There are a bunch of other things I could mention here but I hope the desire is already clear.

TL;DR expect your fundamentals to be tested, and expect possibly needing to go elsewhere to fill some of those gaps.

How should you approach studying on the platform?

GFE does provide various lists (basically a subset of problems) which you can tackle. For example there is a GFE 75 list which is meant to be GFE's take on similar lists like "Blind 75" or "Neetcode 150". Basically it's the 75 most important questions. I've done this list and I do recommend it as a base. From there, try to figure out which types of problems you need more practice on and go beyond the 75.

They do also have study plans for 1 week, 1 month, and 3 months, however in my opinion these add confusion to your prep strategy. For example should I opt for the 1 month list (107 problems) or GFE 75? You would assume that the 1 month list is just GFE 75 + 32 problems right? But it's not. If GFE 75 were the most important problems, why wouldn't they make up the majority of the 1 month list? Not really sure how these lists are curated.

In summary...

Yes it's worth it.

I can say that the GreatFrontEnd platform truly is great, with just a few things that I thought could be better. Most were honestly nitpicks, but none were actual deal-breakers.

My goal here was to write the honest review that I wish actually existed. The platform is not perfect, but it stands as the best one in the market to date and is more than good enough to get you prepared for frontend interviews.

I hope you found the review helpful and if you are preparing for interviews, I wish you good luck!

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