Conventions Used in This Book

The following typographical conventions are used in this book:

Italic

Indicates new terms, URLs, email addresses, filenames, and file extensions.

Constant width

Used for program listings, as well as within paragraphs to refer to program elements such as variable or function names, databases, data types, environment variables, statements, and keywords.

Constant width bold

Shows commands or other text that should be typed literally by the user.

Constant width italic

Shows text that should be replaced with user-supplied values or by values determined by context.

Using Code Examples

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Who is this book for

I assume that if you are reading this book, you already have a working knowledge of Python or Java. If you have never programmed before, I encourage you to start by learning these programming languages.

For those programmers reading this book, I intend to show you how to improve the efficiency of your code when solving some of the most common problems that arise frequently. You will also learn about the most common data types in Computer Science — Bags, Stacks, Queues, Dictionaries, Binary Trees, Graphs — and how to use the most efficient implementations that already exist, without having to reinvent the wheel.

For me, Algorithms are the best part of Computer Science. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to present this material to you.

Acknowledgments

Acks go here.