5 ms·

I am going through Cormen et al. with the objective of getting my feet wet but the whole process is painfully slow. I thought it would be nice to have at least

by iamanet 16y ago

I am going through Cormen et al. with the objective of getting my feet wet but the whole process is painfully slow. I thought it would be nice to have at least some familiarity on the widely used algorithms across the globe. However, you are right on ditching programming languages with huge boot times. I am happily trying out my algorithms in Python.

tptacek 16y ago
Strongly recommend Skiena over Cormen, for what it's worth.
- igravious 16y ago
  Link for both please, and why? :)
sb 16y ago
CLR is an extremely well written algorithms textbook, but I use it more as a reference than for self-study. My first algorithms book was Sedgewick's Algorithms (where all algorithms were presented in Pascal), which is a very good algorithms text that is much lighter on several aspects. Recently, however, I came across the following gem: Algorihtms + Data Structures = Programs, by Niklaus Wirth. (an Oberon version of 1994 is available for free: http://www.oberon.ethz.ch/WirthPubl/AD.pdf http://www.oberon.ethz.ch/WirthPubl/AD.pdf). I think this is hands down one of the best algorithm books. It amazes me how much content Niklaus Wirth is able to present in concise, yet crystal clear writing. Besides the usual algorithms, he includes very interesting applications that probably no other book does: using the partitioning of QuickSort to find the median (pg. 56 in above PDF, Section 2.3.4), based on algorithm by C.A.R. Hoare, and an in-depth discussion of polyphase sort (pg. 70, Section 2.4.4), which might be interesting for heavily distributed sorting (that at least what I imagined as a possible application when I recently re-read parts of it).
- iamanet 16y ago
  Thanks. BTW, here is the correct link for the book that you referred to on your comment - http://www-old.oberon.ethz.ch/WirthPubl/AD.pdf http://www-old.oberon.ethz.ch/WirthPubl/AD.pdf.
  - sb 16y ago
    Thanks for the correction!
- mahmud 16y ago
  A fellow Oberon fan! Wirth has a rare talent for language design, and I cut my compiler hacking teeth on Oberon, thanks to his tiny booklet on the language and its implementation.
  - sb 16y ago
    I think his talent for language design is undisputed. But his talent for writing easily equals his talent in programming, e.g., I never came across any work of Wirth that was not well written and contained interesting insights. A couple of years back, I came across the very interesting paper "Good Ideas, Through the Looking Glass" (2005) http://www.cs.inf.ethz.ch/~wirth/Articles/GoodIdeas_origFig.pdf http://www.cs.inf.ethz.ch/~wirth/Articles/GoodIdeas_origFig.... which is probably not as Wirth-esque as his books, but still an interesting review of what happend in our discipline, looking back.

by iamanet 16y ago

tptacek 16y ago

Strongly recommend Skiena over Cormen, for what it's worth.

igravious 16y ago
Link for both please, and why? :)

sb 16y ago

CLR is an extremely well written algorithms textbook, but I use it more as a reference than for self-study. My first algorithms book was Sedgewick's Algorithms (where all algorithms were presented in Pascal), which is a very good algorithms text that is much lighter on several aspects. Recently, however, I came across the following gem: Algorihtms + Data Structures = Programs, by Niklaus Wirth. (an Oberon version of 1994 is available for free: http://www.oberon.ethz.ch/WirthPubl/AD.pdf http://www.oberon.ethz.ch/WirthPubl/AD.pdf). I think this is hands down one of the best algorithm books. It amazes me how much content Niklaus Wirth is able to present in concise, yet crystal clear writing. Besides the usual algorithms, he includes very interesting applications that probably no other book does: using the partitioning of QuickSort to find the median (pg. 56 in above PDF, Section 2.3.4), based on algorithm by C.A.R. Hoare, and an in-depth discussion of polyphase sort (pg. 70, Section 2.4.4), which might be interesting for heavily distributed sorting (that at least what I imagined as a possible application when I recently re-read parts of it).

iamanet 16y ago
Thanks. BTW, here is the correct link for the book that you referred to on your comment - http://www-old.oberon.ethz.ch/WirthPubl/AD.pdf http://www-old.oberon.ethz.ch/WirthPubl/AD.pdf.
- sb 16y ago
  Thanks for the correction!
mahmud 16y ago
A fellow Oberon fan! Wirth has a rare talent for language design, and I cut my compiler hacking teeth on Oberon, thanks to his tiny booklet on the language and its implementation.
- sb 16y ago
  I think his talent for language design is undisputed. But his talent for writing easily equals his talent in programming, e.g., I never came across any work of Wirth that was not well written and contained interesting insights. A couple of years back, I came across the very interesting paper "Good Ideas, Through the Looking Glass" (2005) http://www.cs.inf.ethz.ch/~wirth/Articles/GoodIdeas_origFig.pdf http://www.cs.inf.ethz.ch/~wirth/Articles/GoodIdeas_origFig.... which is probably not as Wirth-esque as his books, but still an interesting review of what happend in our discipline, looking back.