Data Structures and Algorithms in Java

Rating:
Summary: Not a good text for an undergrad Algorithms course
Review: While this may be a good book for expanding knowledge of Java for an experienced Java programmer, this book is not particularly successful as an undergraduate text. It is especially poor as a (ACM/IEEE) CO1 text. The book inadequately explains Java features not covered in popular introductory Java based CS1 and CS2 introductory programming texts. Further, the book's explanation of data structures and algorithms are at best muddled. The book's exposition on implimentation issues is almost non-existent. The reader is left to intuit why linked structures are being implimented the way that they are. The chapter on priority queues is especially bad in this regard. No clear explanation is proved for why heaps have peripheral null elements. Further, the text does not adequately support students coming into the course with deficiences in MA1 (discrete mathematics) and especially in asymptotic analysis. Fortunately, there are alternative books coming onto the market. I sincerely wish that one that I received a few weeks ago was around when I adoptiing a text for my Design and Analysis of Algorithms course.