Is It Normal to Struggle With the Coin Change Problem and Dynamic Programming?

Watching an explanation multiple times isn’t a sign that you’re bad at programming. These ideas often need time to settle. After watching the solution, close it and try to reconstruct the recurrence and a small example yourself. Then implement it from scratch and compare your reasoning with the solution.

Yes, that’s completely normal. Dynamic programming is less about memorizing one technique and more about learning to identify states, transitions, and repeated subproblems. Even after solving several examples, new problems can still look unfamiliar. For coin change, try defining a state such as the minimum number of coins needed to make each amount, then build larger amounts from smaller ones.