> I never understood why so many people like it. It's a good reference for anyone who is researching how to approach a given problem. One can switch off to a d

> I never understood why so many people like it. It's a good reference for anyone who is researching how to approach a given problem. One can switch off to a different text later on if they need to, and one of the nice features of Skiena is that he provides links at times to source code and further reading. Ideally you'd know all the basics and use something like Kao's Encyclopedia of Algorithms to lookup the rest, but that thing is big enough to beat a man to death with. Skiena is a lot more approachable.