Data Structures and Algorithms in Python Hardcover – 5 July 2013

A good textbook teaching python and object oriented programming as well as the titular topics. In some parts of it I found the text to be clearer than in others (which seemed to provide less scaffolding and be somewhat under-defined); I don’t know whether that was different authors or just more complex subjects. However, the book consistently provided helpful and easy to understand diagrams alongside the text that always enabled me determine what was meant by what was said. I haven’t done any of the exercises, but they look like they would be helpful.

Delivery was satisfactory, and the book itself has all the material you need for python, but honestly I find the internet to be much easier to work from

Whilst this gives a great in depth introduction to data structures in Python, it is lacking in its presentation of the code.For example in the chapter on Trees the theoretical content is great but the examples are badly presented. Implementations are not complete and data types are not explicitly presented via an example of their use. Which is a shame as in many way the best way to learn is by seeing a complete working implementation first.So whilst I get the whole learn by working it out philosophy, this is better done with access to somebody who can answer your questions rather than a book.

While the theoretical presentation is good, the actual code is overly engineered and twisted. For example having separate Position and _Node classes for binary trees is needlessly complicating the code and the inheritance structure.