Reviews (1)

Very good PL starter
I have always been interested in PL and always looking for a book whichcovers some of the fundamental issues in a concise, theritical, abstractand understandable way. I think this book is a very satisfactory answer tomy search.

High Points:

covers the fundamentals of PL that I feel mostgraduate CS students must be comfortable with. It directly addresses manysubtle issues which are always confusing when you start in a very neat way.The level of abstraction used for discussing thigs is just right. One canunderstand things reading through the book most of the times It talks aboutthe theoritical angles but again not in a manner that its too difficult toread.

I would highly recommend this book for undergraduate PL class andas a reference book for fundamental concepts. If you feel ever confusedabout difference between types/class, polymorphisms and all, understandingthe real difference between paradigms this is a nice book to go through.The choice of topics covered is also pretty good.

I would have liked tosee more on OOP in the book. Also subtype polymorphism was not covered togreat extent. But that's just me.

Reviews (32)

Third edition is much improved
When I learned that this was the required book for my introductory data structures class this semester, I was somewhat worried by the large number of very negative reviews I saw it had received here. However, during the first class meeting, the professor made a point of instructing us to get the third edition (published in 2004), explaining that the differences between the second and third editions were significant.

Judging by the older reviews below, he was right - the book I read seems to bear little if any resemblance to the one denounced by the other reviewers. I found it clear and readable, though it was rather basic and dry. But then, I wasn't expecting great literature - this is a introductory compsci textbook, after all. Though it could be dull at times, it generally managed to get its information across clearly, which is all it needs to do. There were some typos, of course, though probably not more than should be expected to accompany such a major revision. The book's main flaw was an index that had essentially no relation to the actual text itself. A corrected index is available at the book's Web site.

In terms of organization, Goodrich and Tamassia start off with a brief introduction to Java, object oriented design and a brief and very basic discussion of running time and asymptotic analysis. They then work their way through basic data structures and abstract data types - stacks, queues, vectors, lists, trees (general, binary, and binary search), priority queues, heaps, dictionaries, hash tables and graphs. They discuss the structures' purposes and major operations, analyze the operations' running times, and include decent, heavily-documented Java implementations of some of the structures and methods. They also do some stuff with algorithms, though generally nothing very complex or sophisticated. I used this book in an introductory data structures course at a liberal arts college, which managed to cover pretty much everything in the book with little difficulty.

There are a lot of exercises at the end of each chapter. Goodrich and Tamassia divide them up into progressively more complex "Reinforcement", "Creativity" and "Projects" sections. My instructor preferred to assign problems and programming assignments of his own creation, though, so I don't know how helpful or useful the exercises in the book actually are.

All in all, it seem Goodrich and Tamassia noticed the sort of reviews the earlier editions of this book were getting and took steps to correct the many problems they had. I expect that if you have to use the book in a data structures course, you'll find it at least reasonably clear and generally acceptable. As long as you're using the third edition, that is.

Not Recommended
Like many other reviewers, I had to purchase this book for one of my CS courses. As a reference book, it gets no more than 1 star. I find it often confusing in its explanations, incomplete code examples and uneven pace. I understand that it was designed to be a textbook, but it miserably fails to be of any value to a student. For 100+ bucks, I expected a lot more.

A hideous book for undergrad D&S
This is required reading in a CS course I take, and I find it to be an annoyingly confusing book.The language is exceptionally unclear, remeniscient of a bad math book on calculus.The code examples of ideas are sparse and skinny on details.Far too often something is "trivial" or left as an exercise.In addition the accompanying exercises are far harder than the in text material (what little there is to look for for reference).Some subjects which I would expect to have several pages on, IE: the ideas of polymorphism, casting and inheritanc , contain a mere page or less.The claim that the book is "well illustrated" is also quite false, unless you feel like counting the pictures in the headers of the chapters.Overall I have found this book to be a meanace to my learning the material and I am thankfull that I possess an exceptional CS teacher who is able to fully explain what the book fails to do.{Hint to the authors: your book should NOT read like a lecture, it should read like a real textbook, one that actually covers MORE than the professor does in class instead of far less.)

Reviews (11)

Terribly written
I have taken several math and computer programming courses. This it the worst book I have ever been forced used. I had a hard time recalling some of the math that is used immediately, the explanations are terrible to say the least. I tried for hours to figure it out using just that book. When I got home I found a different reference and had it figure out in one minutes. So basically the problems I am assigned I have to learn from another source to do... that shouldn't be. Find another author that cares if he makes sense or not, one that doesn't assume you will understand it regardless of how it is explained.... "such is higher education these days" I wish I could slap that guy.

Average and TOO much mathematics
The initial sections of the book focus on too much mathematical formula without providing plain English examples especially in the asymptotic analysis sections.Isn't there a book out there which explains in plain simple English?It also uses misleading terms like "external nodes" and "internal nodes" when it comes to trees.I wouldn't recommend this book.(I'm only using it because it is the university text, now I wish I had my money back)