Preface

Quite often, as software developers, when presented with a new task or challenge, we find ourselves grabbing code fragments or patterns that we are most familiar with. We typically make this choice because those fragments and patterns represent the shortest path between two points, namely, the client’s requirements and a deadline (also known as payday). However, this approach sometimes prevents us from learning new skills and ideas that will make us better and more efficient developers.

This book was written to give aspiring, new, or relatively inexperienced but busy developers an opportunity to step back and examine some of the fundamental concepts regarding data types and data structures. To that, we will examine how these types and structures are built, how they function, and how we can leverage them in our everyday applications. By doing so, we will gain new knowledge, skills, abilities and, hopefully, get some new ideas on how to leverage these basic components.