Book Image

Beginning Java Data Structures and Algorithms

By : James Cutajar
Book Image

Beginning Java Data Structures and Algorithms

By: James Cutajar

Overview of this book

Learning about data structures and algorithms gives you a better insight on how to solve common programming problems. Most of the problems faced everyday by programmers have been solved, tried, and tested. By knowing how these solutions work, you can ensure that you choose the right tool when you face these problems. This book teaches you tools that you can use to build efficient applications. It starts with an introduction to algorithms and big O notation, later explains bubble, merge, quicksort, and other popular programming patterns. You’ll also learn about data structures such as binary trees, hash tables, and graphs. The book progresses to advanced concepts, such as algorithm design paradigms and graph theory. By the end of the book, you will know how to correctly implement common algorithms and data structures within your applications.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)

Summary


In this chapter, we laid the foundations for the more complex upcoming sections. In the first few sections, we saw how a simple problem such as sorting can have many solutions, all with different performance properties. We explored three main implementations, which were bubble, quick, and merge sort.

In later sections, we introduced data structures and studied various implementations and use cases of linked lists, queues, and stacks. We also saw how some data structures can be used as building blocks to build more complex ones on top. In the next chapter, we will study hash tables and binary trees, two important and widely used data structures.