hai all,

i am studying K&R2. along with that, after covering some chapters i
want to start the study of "algorithms and data structures". i checked
ACCU and found this one caught my eyes:

"Introduction to Computing and Algorithms" -- Russell Shackelford


may i know your views/advice ?

(i do not like Academic texts)

thanks


-- arnuld
http://arnuld.blogspot.com

On Mar 7, 10:10 am, "arnuld" <geek.arn...@gmail.com> wrote:
An excellent choice (K&R2). You have hit a winner with that one.

I have not read it. I like:
Anything by Sedgewick
Anything by Weiss
Anything by Knuth (but he is definitely academic)

You can't go wrong with:
"Introduction to Algorithms" by Thomas H. Cormen, Ronald L. Rivest,
Clifford Stein, Charles Eric Leiserson

A pity. Knuth is clearly the best computer science author ever,
period, no question about it. But also quite academic in his
approach.

On the other hand:
American Heritage Dictionary
academic (ak'?-dem'ik)
adj.

1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of a school, especially one
of higher learning.
2.
A. Relating to studies that are liberal or classical rather
than technical or vocational.
B. Relating to scholarly performance: a student's academic
average.
3. Of or belonging to a scholarly organization.
4. Scholarly to the point of being unaware of the outside world.
See Synonyms at pedantic.
5. Based on formal education.
6. Formalistic or conventional.
7. Theoretical or speculative without a practical purpose or
intention. See Synonyms at theoretical.
8. Having no practical purpose or use.

If you are speaking of the 4th, 7th or 8th form, then I quite agree
with you.

arnuld wrote:
I don't know about that one but I can testify that Sedgewick has been
of excellent help to me. Just use Amazon or Google, it's a highly
respected book in it's subject. Knuth is good, but may not be to your
taste, since it's rather formal.

Curious, but why?

arnuld wrote:
Dale Gribble's alter ego wrote a book on algorithms? Well, I never
would have guessed that would happen!

- Logan

:-)

it fits my thinking very well. actually, i call them "totally anti-
academic" authors

;-)


Mark Allen Weiss, i guess. so he is good you say.


that is why i do not like his books.



it is also laid out towards an academic approach. i said so after
searching the archives of "comp.programming" and "comp.lang.c" and
"some others" i did not remember.



why a pity? this is just my habit. there were 4 books i ordered from
USA, one of them was 60 $, pretty expensive. it was "how to design
programmes" from MIT press [1]. book is quite good, it never worked
for me and it took me more 6 months and 10,000 INR (INdian Rupees) to
discover that academic approach is a problem for me. also, other books
i ordered, never made any sense to me. [2] it was just that their
authors use a purely different (a.k.a academic) approach.

i love K&R2 approach and style.


yes, i am speaking from 4th, 7th and 8th angle.


-- arnuld
http://arnuld.blogspot.com


[1] http://htdp.org
[2]
http://www.amazon.com/s/102-1698207-...Mozilla-search
http://www.amazon.com/Seasoned-Schem...3326336&sr=8-2

/amazon/ always provides completely WRONG reviews. see my reply to the
post made my "user923005", to ahve an explanation. can not say about
Google. tried it 2 times it did not work. ACCU is pretty good, 90% of
the times.


yep.

see my reply to "user923005". i have explained it there.

thanks Santosh

Logan, i googled for dale Gribble and found this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Gribble


what it has to do with my post?

"arnuld" <geek.arnuld@gmail.com> writes:

Weiss is great. He taught me plenty about binary trees, when I
thought I already knew a lot.
--
Ben Pfaff
blp@cs.stanford.edu
http://benpfaff.org

i want to make sure that he style is not academic oriented.

"arnuld" <geek.arnuld@gmail.com> writes:

I wouldn't say so. Straightforward and practical, I'd think,
with plenty of code examples.
--
"In this world that Hugh Heffner had made,
he alone seemed forever bunnyless."
--John D. MacDonald

"Logan Shaw"
<lshaw-usenet@austin.rr.com> wrote in
message
news:45ef7787$0$28086$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
The first thing I thought of when I saw
this post too :-).

what the hell, that Dale Gribble has to do with my post.


i am not a native-Englishman, so i can't comprehend some of your TV,
SF and pop-culture things. this comment of Dale Gribble points to
English culture of which i am not fully aware.

may you ?

On 8 Mar 2007 08:23:44 -0800
"arnuld" <geek.arnuld@gmail.com> wrote:

The first paragraph of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Gribble

Will make it all clear.

--
C:>WIN | Directable Mirror Arrays
The computer obeys and wins. | A better way to focus the sun
You lose and Bill collects. | licences available see
| http://www.sohara.org/

arnuld wrote:
Yet very precise. Great book.

You need to be more than competent in mathematics to really get the
most out of Knuth's books.

[ ... ]

Wouldn't they have been available here in India? Atleast some "value
priced" versions.

If you are able to read K&R then why not try Knuth? .... it is clearly
one of the best books on Computer Algo albeit with a mathematical
inclination.

http://naygib.blogspot.com/2006/11/who-reads-knuth.html

Alternatively you could try :
Horowiz & Sahani : Computer Algorithms
Aho, Hopcroft and Ullman : Data Structures and Computer Algorithms.

I don't know what you exactly mean by "academic" but I've been greatly
helped by all the above books.

On Mar 8, 10:17 am, "santosh" <santosh....@gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
I will take it a step farther. If you do not at least understand the
basic ideas that Knuth teaches, you will never be a great programmer.

You can succeed and make money and all that, but the solutions you
create will not be nearly so good as the solutions created by someone
who understands the underlying basis for how things work. If all you
care about is getting a job, then it does not matter. But if you want
to be really outstanding and want to make your clients prosper, then
it is essential to really understand the inner working and why O(f(N))
underpinnings are so important.

IMO-YMMV.
[snip]

user923005 wrote:

That may be true, but the issue is not the "basic ideas" of his books
(although much of their content is irrelevant to most programmers /all/
the time, and only relevant to some programmers some of the time). The
issue is his presentation. Which is more than just dense, it is
frequently opaque.

I don't think Knuth is a good starting point for anyone who doesn't
already have a background in the study of algorithms or a background in
maths (at least one or the other, ideally both).

For me, Sedgewick (the one-volume version of "Algorihms") was pitched
about right -- I could understand a lot ot it, but there was enough
there that I still turn to it many years later. But that might be too
"academic" for the OP too. If so then I suggest that "Programming
Perls" might be more to his taste, and is better suited to a beginner.

-- chris

On Mar 8, 2:01 pm, "Chris Uppal" <chris.up...@metagnostic.REMOVE-
THIS.org> wrote:
I believe that people who say that did not try very hard to understand
it.
It's not that difficult. True, lots of people seem to cough up chunks
trying to get it. I think that comes from starting in the middle.

The more math and computer science you have already, the easier it
will be. I agree on this. But someone with a high school education
and having read one book on programming should have enough background
to get it.

I have all of Sedgewick's books, I think.

Bentley's "Programming Pearls" is similar to Skienna's algorithms book
(IMO). I think it is a fun read for someone who is already a
programmer. But neither one seems to be formulated for learning how
to do it, from my point of view. The thing I liked most about both of
those is the stories about how ideas came about.

i checked it but tell me:

1.) was that a "pun" or
2.) means "Russell Shackelford" is not a good author.

?

arnuld wrote:
Dale Gribble is a fictional character, so I wouldn't worry too much
that he wrote any bad computer programming books.

So that means #1. It was a joke.

- Logan