Data Structures and Algorithms in Java

True, data structures can be hard to grasp. As a first-year student I experienced that to my bones. But, this book saved me. Suffice to say that I liked the book so much that I ordered it AFTER my final exam. I used the library version during the term but after the exam I thought to myself "It's not possible to let go of this book."

Libro muy bueno de consulta o para aprender académicamente las más destacadas Estructuras de Datos y Algoritmos. :)

I bought this book for a course, I loved it! It is a hard subject but it's well written and the other make it easy to understand!

Livre vraiment tres complet pour aborder toutes les structures de donnees et leurs algorithmes. L'un de mes livres favoris apres Effective Java (2nd Edition).

This is an awesome intro to data structures. I purchased the book over Christmas break in order to prepare for a data structures class at school. Due to the fact that the book we were using had gotten such poor reviews on here and after hearing people talk about how hard the class was. I wanted to get a head start and couldn't have picked a better book for self study. I want to preface this by saying I had no idea what a BST(Binary Search Tree) was before even starting this book and after finishing had a rock solid grasp on all the DS in the book. Pros: ------ * Really easy to read the author has a very laid back style and actually explains things, and unlike most authors does a good job of making the foundational concepts clear. * The books webpage has a bunch of applets you can download for free(1 for each data structure covered in the chapter) its very nice because the author uses them when explaining things. So you can actually see what happens when for example you insert something into a red black tree or delete something from a 2-3-4 tree. I find that this is much more inline with the style teachers use in class by explaining and drawing on the white board (which is obviously lacking from most books). *Each data structure gets its due, the author devotes 40-60 pages on each DS and really goes in depth about each of their unique features. For example there is a really good description in the hash table chapter about the different kinds of collision handling which was glossed over at best in the DS book I used for my class. *Very in-depth coverage of the usually difficult RBST, which when we learned them in school I was already so comfortable with them it was a review if anything. Cons: ------ *This really is an introduction to DS the you only get about 12 of them and they are usually the 1 or 2 basic types for each category. For example in the heap chapter the author talks about priority queues and binary heaps(which he fails to call them by name). But there is no mention of leftist heaps, Fibonacci heaps, or any of the other types. This isn't a big deal since they can be easily understood with the knowledge you'll gain from this book. I'm honestly hesitant as to whether or not to list this as a drawback because its honestly a very minor one and for the author to cover all those ancillary data structures in the detail the book goes into it would probably have to be a 3-4 volume set. *Lacks the proofs that most D.S. books include this isn't a big deal if you know how to do induction proofs you can look them up online and prove them for yourself (which is the point anyway). Bottom Line: ----------- -Incredible D.S. book -Excellent for self-study -Easy to read/understand -Applets are very helpful -You will have an extremely solid understanding of the D.S. covered in this book when your done reading it