Data Structures and Algorithms in Java,   ISBN:9780471738848

Customer Rating: 

This text book is a terrible attempt at education. It lacks the code to demonstrate test drivers to help the learner understand how to apply any code snippets demonstrated, and also represents most of the material in garbled pseudo-code, instead of teaching from code itself.

I'm currently reading through chapter 9 - hash tables, and with the sheer lack of examples (the author thinks 3 paragraphs is enough to teach hash codes?) it makes it nearly impossible to understand this subject.

The approach the authors took in this text is to refresh the memory of the programmer who has already mastered the subject. This is NOT a text designed for those new to the subject.

Sadly, as long as educators keep falling for this hideous book, students will be continually required to spend their hard-earned cash and support the authors in this pathetic attempt at education.

Customer Rating: 

Data Sturctures and Algorithms in Java is a great book for a Data Structure class for CS student. I go to a school where data structures is taught in C++. But i used this book to learn about most data structures. The explanations are very clear and detailed. I did not use the source code from this book as i had to program in C++ , however I used this book more than my assigned course book . I still use this book as reference . I really liked the chapter on Complexity . Very good explanation .
This book covers all the topics in detail. I think it is a must for every CS student to have.

Customer Rating: 

This was a mediocre text that is a rewrite of the same text in C++. As is common, the book reads like it was updated by search and replace.

Customer Rating: 

This is for the fourth edition, which from other reviews doesn't suck as bad as the first two...

It's an okay text book - but I pity anybody who doesn't have either experiance working with data structures in C or C++ OR who hasn't taken a Finite Math class specifically for CS.

Only get it because you need it for a course, spend as little as possible and then dump it on eBay as quick as you can. Not worth keeping as a reference.

Customer Rating: 

This book, as many have said, is used in numerous introductory courses in computer science. It was recently dropped by my college after it was disowned by the professors who chose it -- we students threw so much scorn on the book no one wanted to admit they had anything to do with it.

The book has a very idiosyncratic style. It likes to use some unnecessarily specific class and method names for its examples (e.g. The authors create a binary node class -- BTNode -- for you and then never use it, but go back to their BTPosition class) and fails nearly every time when it attempts to justify certain proofs about big-O and algorithm runtimes. In fact, the authors seem to think it adequate to make a broad statement and then give a simple example.

All in all, you're best finding webpages written by random professors than purchasing this morass.