There is a Russian saying, “Wise people like to learn, fools like to teach”. I like to teach.
Teaching has been my second nature for quite a while. Since I graduated I have been teaching part-time almost every year. And often I taught computer science fundamentals, for instance, data structures and algorithms.
I believe that knowing basic search algorithms, and being fluent in data structures can help you in life… well… at least if you are a programmer. Not because you may use them often, but because you have to know how the bricks of the entire bulding look like.
I have seen many mistakes and confusion when people needed to code simple things. My first commercial program was a sorting program. It worked 40 minutes to sort the data every week for one control system. Not a big deal. After a year being in production I found a utility library and replaced my sort program with the one from that library. It worked 3 minutes to sort the same amount of data. The difference was just in simply choosing a better algorithm. I was ashamed.
What’s the point? Nothing, really. However, if you want to refresh your knowledge of data structures and algorithms, here is a link to the list of the most popular books on the subject. The stars show the amazon.com rating of the books, the numbers show my personal rating.
List of Books and Useful Links
