Data Structures in Java Review

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(More customer reviews)As a student who completed a data structures course using this book, I believe that I can offer a review that has special insight that might be lacking in a typical review.
Overall, the book is very solid, and it accomplishes its purpose. Standish takes a naturally abstract topic and provides numerous visuals and models to help the student visualize ADT's. Without these models, a data structures book would not only be extremely dry, but also difficult to follow. This is certainly the book's strong point. There is no doubt in my mind that Standish is a great teacher of data structures because of this. Also noteworthy is the setup of the book. Recursion, a difficult but essential topic in computer science, is covered early on. For the CS2 programmer, recursion can be very difficult at times, and it is critical that the reader understands the value of incorporating this technique into ADT programs. In addition, chapter 5 covers modularity and information hiding, which partially introduces the essence behind ADT's. I think this is a great placement of this chapter, because when we get into real ADT's, like Stacks and Queues, we understand the purpose of ADT's: all we need to know now is the operations that Stacks and Queues have to offer. In short, this placement of the chapters allows for quick and easy understanding of a subject that is not concrete by definition. Another good point is its sorting chapter, which covers almost any sorting and searching algorithm you could think of, including Radix Sort and ProxMap sort, which are difficult, if not impossible, to find in other data structures books.
The only negative point about the book is the price. For its price, the books should be 50-100 pages longer. And by that, I don't mean extending long appendices, which contribute to the mediocre thickness of the book already. When I finished the book, I thought I got most of what data structures in computer science had to offer. But I was dead wrong. I found another book (I don't recall the author) that covered trees which I never heard of, and other advanced ADT's like binomial queues. Sorry, you won't find anything like this in this book. In addition, there just aren't enough exercises offered in this book that present any real challenge. That may be up to the ability level of the programmer, but in most exercises, all that is required to complete them is just a simple modification of a source code example. That, in my judgment, is not enough if one wants to build up any skills in programming.
In conclusion, the book may have its shortcomings, particularly in its length, but overall, its fabulous explanations of an obscure topic more than make up for any faults. This book is excellent for an intro to data structures ONLY!

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Using Java 1.1, this book teaches the fundamentals of data structures and algorithms. With this exciting new language, Tim Standish takes a fresh look at the subject matter. New challenges arise any time a new language is used, and the author meets these challenges. For example, although Java is a language without explicit pointers, this book offers pointer diagrams to help students visualize, reason about, and understand this major Data Structures topic. Standish's clear presentation helps readers tie the many concepts of data structures together with recurring themes. Central ideas-such as modularity, levels of abstraction, efficiency, and tradeoffs-serve as integrators in the book in order to tie the material together conceptually and to reveal its underlying unity and interrelationships.

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