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This book was motivated by my experience in teaching the course E&CE 250: Algorithms and Data Structures in the Computer Engineering program at the University of Waterloo. I have observed that the advent of object-oriented methods and the emergence of object-oriented design patterns has lead to a profound change in the pedagogy of data structures and algorithms. The successful application of these techniques gives rise to a kind of cognitive unification: Ideas that are disparate and apparently unrelated seem to come together when the appropriate design patterns and abstractions are used.
This paradigm shift is both evolutionary and revolutionary. On the one hand, the knowledge base grows incrementally as programmers and researchers invent new algorithms and data structures. On the other hand, the proper use of object-oriented techniques requires a fundamental change in the way the programs are designed and implemented. Programmers who are well schooled in the procedural ways often find the leap to objects to be a difficult one.
One cannot learn to program just by reading a book. It is a skill that must be developed by practice. Nevertheless, the best practitioners study the works of others and incorporate their observations into their own practice. I firmly believe that after learning the rudiments of program writing, students should be exposed to examples of complex, yet well-designed program artifacts so that they can learn about the designing good software.
Consequently, this book presents the various data structures and algorithms as complete C++ program fragments. All the program fragments presented in this book have been extracted automatically from the source code files of working and tested programs.
The full functionality of the proposed draft ANSI standard C++ language is used in the examples--including templates, exceptions and run-time type information[3]. It has been my experience that by developing the proper abstractions, it is possible to present the concepts as fully functional programs without resorting to pseudo-code or to hand-waving.
This book was motivated by my experience in teaching the course E&CE 250: Algorithms and Data Structures in the Computer Engineering program at the University of Waterloo. I have observed that the advent of object-oriented methods and the emergence of object-oriented design patterns has lead to a profound change in the pedagogy of data structures and algorithms. The successful application of these techniques gives rise to a kind of cognitive unification: Ideas that are disparate and apparently unrelated seem to come together when the appropriate design patterns and abstractions are used.
This paradigm shift is both evolutionary and revolutionary. On the one hand, the knowledge base grows incrementally as programmers and researchers invent new algorithms and data structures. On the other hand, the proper use of object-oriented techniques requires a fundamental change in the way the programs are designed and implemented. Programmers who are well schooled in the procedural ways often find the leap to objects to be a difficult one.
One cannot learn to program just by reading a book. It is a skill that must be developed by practice. Nevertheless, the best practitioners study the works of others and incorporate their observations into their own practice. I firmly believe that after learning the rudiments of program writing, students should be exposed to examples of complex, yet well-designed program artifacts so that they can learn about the designing good software.
Consequently, this book presents the various data structures and algorithms as complete C++ program fragments. All the program fragments presented in this book have been extracted automatically from the source code files of working and tested programs.
The full functionality of the proposed draft ANSI standard C++ language is used in the examples--including templates, exceptions and run-time type information[3]. It has been my experience that by developing the proper abstractions, it is possible to present the concepts as fully functional programs without resorting to pseudo-code or to hand-waving.
