Customer Reviews

Data Structures and Algorithms with Object-Oriented Design Patterns in Java (Worldwide Series in Computer Science)

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

 

 

Not to bad. The book is a little high in price, but covers a large set of algorithms that could be applied to many Java applications. The book reads like a algebra book, with lots of formulas and theory and with not enough examples. Not for light reading.

Some people are reviewing this book as hard to read, confusing, and complaining that the code doesn't compile. Such is the state of higher education these days...I would actually say that this is a very readable introductory treatment on data structures. Granted, there seems to be the occasional error in implementing classes that strictly conform to given definitions, and some of the implementations seem a bit simplistic, but overall its a fine piece of work. I found the implementations for tree traversals in chapter 9 to be rather clever.

There is something of a reliance upon a hierarchy structure (introduced in ch. 5) which i think might turn some people off in using this book as a text. Chapters seem to build upon previous chapters, requiring you to read most of the book. Professors have a tendency to skip around to fit the curricula into the time of the class term which might make the book seem confusing--i've just been reading it straight through for personal amusement so i'm not as influenced by this. I think this class hierarchy is justified because the book isn't just about data structures, its also about design patterns. If you know something about either data structures or design patterns you can gain insight into both from reading this.

And as for compiling the code...the purpose of books like this shouldn't be to copy and paste code. If you have even a vague understanding of the material "filling in the blanks" and writing your own code should be a simple matter.

Hi, as an undergrad engineering student, I had this book for the coursebook in my algorithms course. Honestly speaking, it's good , very readable text. I never used any of the code examples fom the book in my assignments, yet they proved rather helpfull in understanding the material. Something, that I think is missing from this book is the answeres to the problems at the end of the chapter that are not programming projects. Ading them to the book could help students a lot ( no need to relay on TA's )

The initial sections of the book focus on too much mathematical formula without providing plain English examples especially in the asymptotic analysis sections. Isn't there a book out there which explains in plain simple English? It also uses misleading terms like "external nodes" and "internal nodes" when it comes to trees. I wouldn't recommend this book. (I'm only using it because it is the university text, now I wish I had my money back)

As a second year student, the use of design patterns (see chapter 5) bothers me. It really detracts from what the author is trying to convey. It's extremely hard to ignore them because you have to backtrack to previous chapters frequently which creates more confusion.

This book may be useful to learn the basics of software engineering. But given complexity of the design patterns in this book, it could be glossed over in one lecture.

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this book is awful!! most of the code from the book will not compile directly, especially in later chapters. a lot of the code is not even finished (like the section on AVL and Binary Search trees). way too much energy is spent on creating structures and classes that already exist within java, and the math used to gauge algorithm complexity is unnecessarily complex. not worth even $20...

I found this book confusing while using it in a Data Structures class. It seems to focus too much on the math behind the algorithms and not enough on the structures. It doesn't help that the author uses his own implementations as examples instead of using the actual Java implementation. I think this book is more appropriate for people looking for an in-depth explaination of algorithms and their use in certain patterns. For the learning of Data Structures this book makes it too complicated.

I have taken several math and computer programming courses. This it the worst book I have ever been forced used. I had a hard time recalling some of the math that is used immediately, the explanations are terrible to say the least. I tried for hours to figure it out using just that book. When I got home I found a different reference and had it figure out in one minutes. So basically the problems I am assigned I have to learn from another source to do... that shouldn't be. Find another author that cares if he makes sense or not, one that doesn't assume you will understand it regardless of how it is explained.... "such is higher education these days" I wish I could slap that guy.

I know this book is used as a textbook in some computer engineering courses at my school. However, I do not belong to engineering, but I am a computer science undergraduate. :-) I've tried to help my friends who were having a lot of trouble implementing a binary tree. So to follow what they learned, I've looked at the book. Hmm. I sat there, and said "I'm lucky that my profs don't teach me algorithms like this." Some implementations did not make quite intuitive sense to me. Although I understood what the book was trying to illustrate, but I didn't see why such implementation would be intuitive and useful.

The examples are very trivial in this book; most of them can't be compiled. It only works in theory, but not reality. If you want reality and you are reading this book, then you are wasting your time.