Review on "Essential Algorithms"

 This is a review article on a book "Essential Algorithms" written by Rod Stephens. I'd like to share my thoughts on it.

The best way to understand things described in the book is not only to read it, but also to solve exercises located at the end of each chapter. I tried some of them and had an impression that solving the exercises allows to understand subjects deeper. On the other hand it requires a lot more time than just reading chapters through.

A rather rich variety of subjects are present in the book, including the basics of “computer science”. Most likely this information won't be used in your daily work, at least directly. However something really useful may be found. For example I got familiar with the data structure called “Quadtree” which allows to search for objects on a map for the logarithmic time. I'm pretty sure you'll also find something unexpected and interesting.

As I said earlier, this book contains the basics of “computer science”. It's well written and pseudo code examples are easy to understand, but if you are searching for your first book about “computer science” then “Grokking Algorithms” is a better choice.