![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Algorithms, the good parts
May. 9th, 2017 04:08 pmThese are things that actually have been useful or continue to be useful to my 16 year career as a software professional.
Based on “Introduction to Algorithms” 3rd edition, (c) 2009
I had the 1st edition from 1990 when I used it in class around 2000, but all this is pretty foundational stuff that’s mostly stable over the last 20-30 years.
I Mathematical Foundations
3 Growth of Functions
This is important, everything else will refer to it
II Sorting
Sorting was a foundational bit of CS when it was taught to me, and this was taught using about a dozen different sort algorithms. But what I think actually worth learning is:
6 Heapsort - and the section on “priority queues”
8.4 Bucket Sort - when ‘close enough’ is really fast
And what I sadly don’t see in the table of contents is merge sortall of these - stacks and queues, linked lists
11 Hash Tables - yes, all of javascript and ruby and python and perl are based on this
12 Binary Search Trees - another basic concept that I think is an important alternative to hashes
VI Graph Algorithms
22 Elementary Graph Algorithms - breadth-first-search and depth-first-search are important concepts
VII
27 Multithreaded Algorithms - sooner or later this will be important - thinking about concurrent programming is more and more important as our computer systems get more multi-core and more distributed.
VIII
Appendix B: Sets, Etc
More basic structures everything will refer to. A bit thick with notation, there ought to be simpler explanations of these things. If you want a reminder about what union and intersection of sets are, look here.
Based on “Introduction to Algorithms” 3rd edition, (c) 2009
I had the 1st edition from 1990 when I used it in class around 2000, but all this is pretty foundational stuff that’s mostly stable over the last 20-30 years.
I Mathematical Foundations
3 Growth of Functions
This is important, everything else will refer to it
II Sorting
Sorting was a foundational bit of CS when it was taught to me, and this was taught using about a dozen different sort algorithms. But what I think actually worth learning is:
6 Heapsort - and the section on “priority queues”
8.4 Bucket Sort - when ‘close enough’ is really fast
And what I sadly don’t see in the table of contents is merge sortall of these - stacks and queues, linked lists
11 Hash Tables - yes, all of javascript and ruby and python and perl are based on this
12 Binary Search Trees - another basic concept that I think is an important alternative to hashes
VI Graph Algorithms
22 Elementary Graph Algorithms - breadth-first-search and depth-first-search are important concepts
VII
27 Multithreaded Algorithms - sooner or later this will be important - thinking about concurrent programming is more and more important as our computer systems get more multi-core and more distributed.
VIII
Appendix B: Sets, Etc
More basic structures everything will refer to. A bit thick with notation, there ought to be simpler explanations of these things. If you want a reminder about what union and intersection of sets are, look here.
