This comparison has moved. The verdict now lives inside Is Grokking the Coding Interview Worth It?, in the section that compares the course against every major alternative in one place.
The short version: the book is orientation, the course is problem prep. CTCI's process, behavioral, and big-O chapters still teach well. Its 189 problems, organized by data structure and solved in Java only, predate the pattern era and should not be your syllabus.
There is also a bigger update since this page was written: CTCI now has a successor. Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview reorganizes the problem half around named techniques, and we reviewed it honestly: Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview: An Honest Review.
