Customer Reviews

Data Structures and Algorithms Using C#

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

This book had the potential to be great but missed it's mark. The number of coding and textual errors is just too great for a book of this type. In addition, the coverage of the 'primitive' array and ArrayList items is, I feel incomplete...they're used a whole lot but how they're actually implemented isn't even touched upon (yes, they're language features...but it'd be nice to get some sort of insight here!).
I had such high hopes for this book; one which was missing from the C# armoury and essential to those of us who don't have a conventional Comp Sci background. This book just doesn't cut it...a second edition with better coverage and VASTLY better editing is needed.
Reading more, wish I could change my rating to 1 star (Amazon doesn't seem to allow this...). This is just an insulting book for the price...the number of errors and inaccuracies is remarkable...don't buy this!

About half way through the book, and I am sadly disapointed and am beginning to wish I hadn't purchased this book. The examples printed in the book are grossly incorrect, variables used in the examples where something entirely different is referred to in the text, syntactically incorrect variables in a lot of the examples, and figures are even in consistent. I looked through the pages for an author email addy or someplace to go for eratta, but could find no such thing. I will keep reading through this but its costing me more work trying to figure out what the author really meant then the amount of information I am getting back in return... they really should have proof read this one a little better... my recommendation... do not buy it, or at least until they have fixed the errors.

I looked at the book for author's email address: None.
I looked at the Cambridge book site for kind of feedback form: None.
I wonder. Is this book written by a computer programmer?
Or perhaps the author has ingeniously left many errors in the programs so readers exercise the skills of finding bugs.

Intersting topic, wish it was a good book, but don't waste your money. No exaggeration, every page has at least one error. It seems as though the person writing the code and the person writing the text never talked to each other.

Sure, most of the errors are small, but I'd move on to another book. Data structures are best learned in c/c++ anyway. Get a c++ data structure book, then read about c# collections online and you're done.

I'm sorry to say that as somebody who has worked in this industry for about 8 years but came to it without a Computer Science degree, using this book to round out any final knowledge of things like data structures and algorithms was not very helpful. Sure it had chapters about things like sorting and searching (bubble sort, selection sort, BSTs etc.), but the presentation is pretty awful. Basically, it seems like this book might be good for Michael McMillan to be teaching a classroom with where he can have everybody follow along while he explains the notes in his book on the whiteboard, but don't try to use this book and try to learn on your own, he doesn't know how to teach very well.

Basically, he would quickly talk about a concept and then show a code sample. He did not walk through what was in the code or how he arrived at the code or what the point of the code was. He merely talked about the patterns of say a bubble sort, and then showed you a sample piece of code and left you to figure out how that might acheive those results. You are not going to be able to learn what the code's intent is by simply pushing a sample in front of some one and say "here look, i did this, so do only and exactly this next time."

It also seems to demonstrate his inability to get this book done. Note that the release date for this book got moved back time and time again, and it appears as though finally he just slapped the minimialistic amount of required content together to be able to say he completed the book.

Finally, anyone and everyone who has commented that his code samples are error prone are absolutely correct. I'm not entirely sure that this book was editted. There are constant mistakes throughout the dialog as well as the mistakes in code and I feel sorry for any beginners or C# newbies that are trying to make sense of what he left on paper.

In short, there are other books out there, but if you're set on learning algorithms for C#, there appear to be other books on the way.

I certainly hope that Michael McMillan is at least disappointed with his own efforts here. He really let himself and the developer community down with this offering.

Unfortunately, this book is full of BUGS ! The examples have lot of incorrectness !

We are attempting to use this rather pathetic book as a text. Algorithms are implemented incorrectly and described poorly. Cambridge University Press should be ashamed of themselves for having their name on this alleged programming text. I normally would not advocate burning books, but am willing to make an exception for this one.

I've been waiting for the errata since last June, however there is nothing posted on his web site. I've emailed him about 2 months ago and his response was "I will post the erreta in about a week". I will never buy any book written by Michael M. Mcmillan. I never seen a book contains so many typos and buggy examples.

There are so many problems with this book I'm not sure where to begin. Here are a few random issues:
- Ch. 1 The author creates a class named Timing to time how long it takes a block of code to run. As soon as I saw the name, it bothered me. The class name should be what the class is, not what it does. Timer would have been a better name. Then I wonder if I'm being too critical and continue on. The method names in the class are also poorly named. The casing of method names is not consistent. Now I'm getting worried.

- On to Ch. 2. Coverage of ArrayList is incomplete. There's just no insight given.

- Ch 3. Author gives a poor explanation of a Bubble Sort. How the sort works is not presented in a clear way. On to the Selection Sort. Oops they used the same image for Selection Sort that was used for Bubble Sort.

... The problems go on and on...

So, I sat down to read this book thinking it might have some good insights into using C# for common data algorithms. However, it has become a great source of comedic relief for me, my friends and colleagues. The programming errors are hilarious! My favorite, by far, is on page 255 where the code sample reads like this:

public class Node {
Public int data;
public void Node(ByVal key As Integer) {
data = key;
}
}

Nice mixture of C# and VB.NET in one line of code there. It seems to me that this person doesn't know C# at all.

How did this book ever get published? How does this author keep it published? Why did I buy it?

Well, Mike, thanks for the laughs!

I think the epilogue should contain the following code example:

public class BookAuthor
{

public BookAuthor(bool knowsCSharp)
{
if(knowsCSharp)
knowsCSharp = false; // who am I kidding! - MM
}

public void WriteBook()
{
WriteSomeStuff();
}

public void EditBook()
{
return; // I am a C# GOD!! - MM
}

public void PublishBook()
{
try
{
SendToPublisherAndMakeSale();
}
catch(BookIsHorribleException ex)
{
// just ignore this and keep trying.... - MM
PublishBook();
}
}
}