| I've recently been trying to learn algorithms as a self-taught software engineer. I've made it quite far without much deeper knowledge of the area (I do have some basic overview of course), but it has always been on my mind that I should to study up. I've tried CLRS, but oh boy it's a) a slog to go through, b) very sparse with explanations. You might say that the whole book is one explanation after another, and you'd be technically right, but there's nothing more frustrating than an overly complex explanation that might be absolutely precise yet complex to understand. I also often feel like the language is needlessly complex. On top of that, for example, the mathematical explanations often skip steps that are obvious to authors. You might think it's reasonable, but to a struggling newcomer, this is a huge drag. Unrelated to algorithms (but not totally), I am now studying Discrete Mathematics for Comp Sci [0] since I felt like my math knowledge (or lack thereof) is holding me back in reasoning about algorithms. Even those courses have a fair share of skipping obvious steps in mathematic explanations, but it's doable so far (especially with tools like ChatGPT and Wolfram Alpha to check my understanding). I'm just trying to be a better engineer, and I'm having a really hard time trying to find a suitable resource to learn from. [0] https://www.coursera.org/specializations/discrete-mathematic... |
My data structures course mainly was graded from Zybooks assignments. I think it's actually a pretty good and understandable resource. It was this: https://www.zybooks.com/catalog/data-structures-essentials/
Anyway, maybe after you study discrete math from Coursera, that Zybook could help. It has some basics about big-O notation and determining the big-O of an algorithm (and calculating the number of operations it requires), but after that, it's all explanations of data structures accompanied by many animations and pictures. It may be tedious for someone who already knows how e.g. red black trees works, but it helped me understand them, as well as unbalanced BSTs, AVL trees, B-trees, heaps, and graphs. The stacks and queues were tedious for me, because I already know them.
I do think having taken discrete math helped me; I still flipped through CRLS during the course on the side, and their explanations were less impenetrable because I know the basics of mathematical proofs now.
There's also a book on data structures that went over hash functions (it's out of print, but I found a PDF online). It was also helpful for me. I'll reply to this comment with it when I get home.