Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Hands-on learning is promoted throughout the text by the use of Programming Projects and labs. Programming projects, at the end of each chapter, allow students to develop and implement their own data structures or to extend or apply data structures introduced in the chapter. Additionally, optional labs accompany the text and allow students to practice by giving them opportunities to code. These labs can be used in many different ways such as in a closed lab, in an open lab, or for optional homework assignments.

Average Customer Rating:

More bugs than a rainforest	Customer Rating:
Paid about $100 dollars for this book only to find more bugs than a rainforest; frustrating since the author teaches at the university level but the code resembles that of a novice programmer. Do yourself a favor and go with another book. You're literally better off crumpling your cash money and throwing it in the trash rather than buying this disappointment.

Worst Textbook

Customer Rating:

This may possibly be the worst programming book I've ever seen. The author has a habbit of talking about something, assuming you already have the knowledge, and then explaining it later, sometimes chapters later. Similarly, when using a class, Collins will state what the class is supposed to do, but not include the implementation until later, which would be good, but you've already been bombarded with so much other stuff you forget what the thing did in the first place. There are also no full examples included with several sections of the book, which are definately needed to learn the material. Finally, when it comes to the data structures (most of the book), Collins explains what they are, and shows pieces of code, but never full implementations. For example, he shows how to adjust a heap, and delete nodes from a heap, but not how to start from scratch. Also, he uses templates containing classes without telling the reader what they mean. I am currently a sophmore in a data structures class, and have talked with at least 5 students in my class. All of them agree that the book is absolutely worthless, as it only gives partial information that's hard to understand. If you're a professor, please think twice about choosing this book.