Data structures & problem solving using Java

What Hacker News says

1. oneplaneNov 2018
   One (relatively) easy way to get better at it is combining a book and some real world uses with a project and a language suited for it.

   For example, you could take python or java (or C#, pretty much any general OOP language), and make a simple crud application. Then add a "reporting" page where you can see different results on for example uses of trees, sorting algorithms or storage data structures (like linked lists, hash maps etc). The crud part can be your familiar part where you have a good feel of what's what, and the report/test/whatever page can be your sandbox to see how your experiments deal with your data.

   One of the books I found helpful was Data Structures and Problem Solving Using Java by Mark A. Weiss.

   A softer start can be found with http://interactivepython.org/runestone/static/pythonds/index...

   If you want something using languages you already know, that's fine too. Say for example you wanted to simply know how to build a tree, or more generally a graph. Those concepts may sound big or complex, but they are only as big or as complex as you want them to be allowing you to build a simple version (i.e. a class that is a node in a linked list, and it holds just a number as a value and the next node for your list as a pointer or value or whatever you like). It's something you could do in 10 lines of code just to get yourself started. Building on top of that is a whole lot easier than jumping straight into AVL trees and A* path finding algorithms.

   Starting light, say, making a few things yourself in a language of your choice will get you a good feel as to what you want to explore and how easy it is to grasp the concepts, for example:

   - linked lists and doubly linked lists

   - binary trees (binary doesn't mean binary data, don't worry)

   - sorting (check quicksort, shellsort, bubblesort on wikipedia for starters to get an animation for an idea what it is)

   - heap

   - stack

   - (priority-) queue

   Show morethread
2. ndiddyJul 2025
   Sure, why not. Obviously if you mean "do you have an example of that exact class hierarchy being shown in an introductory Java textbook" no I don't, you win. However, the example of a program that uses a class inheritance hierarchy defined at compile time to represent all the different types of shapes it can operate with is used all over the place, and that's what I was referring to. Some examples:

   Introduction to Programming in Java by J. N. Patterson Hume and Christine Stephenson, page 392

   Object-oriented Programming with Java by Barry J. Holmes and ‎Daniel T. Joyce, page 544

   Understanding object-oriented programming with Java by Timothy Budd, page 304

   Teach yourself Java by Joseph O'Neil, page 184

   Java in a Nutshell by Benjamin J. Evans, page 128

   Java for Students by Douglas Bell and Mike Parr, page 490

   Data structures and problem solving using Java by Mark Allen Weis, page 84

   See here for a good article that goes over the downsides of this approach, and how it hurts both readability and performance: https://www.computerenhance.com/p/clean-code-horrible-perfor...

   Show morethread