Currently used at many colleges, universities, and high schools, this hands-on introduction to computer science is ideal for people with little or no programming experience. The goal of this concise book is not just to teach you Java, but to help you think like a computer scientist. You’ll learn how to program—a useful skill by itself—but you’ll also discover how to use programming as a means to an end. Authors Allen Downey and Chris Mayfield start with the most basic concepts and gradually move into topics that are more complex, such as recursion and object-oriented programming. Each brief chapter covers the material for one week of a college course and includes exercises to help you practice what you’ve learned. Learn one concept at a time: tackle complex topics in a series of small steps with examples Understand how to formulate problems, think creatively about solutions, and write programs clearly and accurately Determine which development techniques work best for you, and practice the important skill of debugging Learn relationships among input and output, decisions and loops, classes and methods, strings and arrays Work on exercises involving word games, graphics, puzzles, and playing cards

Dive into Python's advanced possibilities, including algorithm analysis, graphs, scale-free networks, and cellular automata with this in-depth, hands-on guide.

If you’re a student studying computer science or a software developer preparing for technical interviews, this practical book will help you learn and review some of the most important ideas in software engineering—data structures and algorithms—in a way that’s clearer, more concise, and more engaging than other materials. By emphasizing practical knowledge and skills over theory, author Allen Downey shows you how to use data structures to implement efficient algorithms, and then analyze and measure their performance. You’ll explore the important classes in the Java collections framework (JCF), how they’re implemented, and how they’re expected to perform. Each chapter presents hands-on exercises supported by test code online. Use data structures such as lists and maps, and understand how they work Build an application that reads Wikipedia pages, parses the contents, and navigates the resulting data tree Analyze code to predict how fast it will run and how much memory it will require Write classes that implement the Map interface, using a hash table and binary search tree Build a simple web search engine with a crawler, an indexer that stores web page contents, and a retriever that returns user query results Other books by Allen Downey include Think Java, Think Python, Think Stats, and Think Bayes.

Introduction -- Array-based lists -- Linked lists -- Skiplists -- Hash tables -- Binary trees -- Random binary search trees -- Scapegoat trees -- Red-black trees -- Heaps -- Sorting algorithms -- Graphs -- Data structures for integers -- External memory searching.

Data Structures & Theory of Computation

If you want to learn how to program, working with Python is an excellent way to start. This hands-on guide takes you through the language a step at a time, beginning with basic programming concepts before moving on to functions, recursion, data structures, and object-oriented design. This second edition and its supporting code have been updated for Python 3. Through exercises in each chapter, youâ??ll try out programming concepts as you learn them. Think Python is ideal for students at the high school or college level, as well as self-learners, home-schooled students, and professionals who need to learn programming basics. Beginners just getting their feet wet will learn how to start with Python in a browser. Start with the basics, including language syntax and semantics Get a clear definition of each programming concept Learn about values, variables, statements, functions, and data structures in a logical progression Discover how to work with files and databases Understand objects, methods, and object-oriented programming Use debugging techniques to fix syntax, runtime, and semantic errors Explore interface design, data structures, and GUI-based programs through case studies

This book describes data structures and data structure design techniques for functional languages.