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Re:50 Algorithms Every Programmer Should Know (Second Edition) by jcranmer on Wednesday January 03, 2024 @10:07AM (#38854905)
To be honest, normally I'd agree with you--there's a core set of important algorithms and data structures that pretty much every programmer should be aware of and understand well enough to be able to figure out how to look for them should they need to use it. And while I normally have a visceral reaction against "XYZ every programmer should know" because it's almost invariably far more detail than what every programmer should know, your basic data structures and algorithms actually are important enough to fall into that category, and there's a reason that a course on the topic is essentially course #2 in a CS curriculum.

But after reading the table of contents here, I'm thoroughly convinced that this book is not about that. About halfway through, I gave up trying to count the algorithms it was covering because it seems like it randomly decides it wants to be an AI textbook instead. Its focus on AI is weird; if you've got time for Naïve Bayes classifiers, where's convex hull? Where's simplex [1]? Fast Fourier Transform? Union-find? Constraint satisfaction? Hell, where's quicksort?

Another harbinger of quality: there's a section on "Choosing between MD5 and SHA". If you have an entire section on that in a book published in 2023, something is wrong. Then again, an algorithms book needing to have a section on that topic is itself... o_O-worthy.

[1] Okay, there's a section on linear programming. A section. Which, based on the section headings, seems entirely focused on "here's how to use a linear programming solver" and not anything on the actual algorithm itself. My algorithms textbook has an entire chapter on simplex, with instructions on how to code the algorithm itself.

Re:50 Algorithms Every Programmer Should Know (Second Edition) by layer8 on Wednesday January 03, 2024 @11:12AM (#38855735)
Yes, I haven’t looked deeper into that particular book and really only wanted to respond to the general notion.
Re:50 Algorithms Every Programmer Should Know (Second Edition) by nkh on Wednesday January 03, 2024 @10:31AM (#38855222)
Thanks for the comment. What books would you recommend?
Re:50 Algorithms Every Programmer Should Know (Second Edition) by jcranmer on Wednesday January 03, 2024 @11:42AM (#38856162)
As noted by sibling, CLRS (https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262046305/introduction-to-algor...) is perhaps the reigning king of algorithms textbooks.

I haven't read it myself, but Algorithm Design Manual (https://www.amazon.com/Algorithm-Design-Manual-Computer-Scie...) also tends to rank high on recommendation lists, and from looking at its table of contents, it does complement CLRS nicely--there looks to be a better selection of things like constraint satisfication or computational geometry.

Re:50 Algorithms Every Programmer Should Know (Second Edition) by tptacek on Wednesday January 03, 2024 @09:14PM (#38862282)
Skiena is great, and is very different from CLRS --- I actually enjoyed reading through Skiena, where CLRS is a reference (and I'd just use the Internet instead of CLRS at this point).
Re:50 Algorithms Every Programmer Should Know (Second Edition) by metaphor on Wednesday January 03, 2024 @11:14AM (#38855760)
CLRS remains canon.