This looks like the class I was hoping to get when I took algorithms and data structures, rather than a semester of CLRS being scrawled on the blackboard every lecture, mountains of proofs, and 0 lines of code.
Not that you are wrong for you opinion, but I feel differently. My data structures class was all programming, essentially just the professor writing code on the board for a linked list / trie / etc. after briefly describing it conceptually, and then having to implement the data structure and perhaps solve a problem with it for homework. My algorithms classes were all proof based / theoretical (the most applied problems asking you to come up with a "novel" algorithm to solve something, but still written). I felt cheated out of an actual class once I realized my data structures class could have been designed the same way. Coding the algorithms is usually the trivially boring or frustrating part to me; it's the actual design or concepts that I enjoyed.
Couldn't agree more. The data structures class I'm taking currently (which is unfortunately a prerequisite for most other CS classes) is simply a bunch of trivial programming exercises that take almost no effort to do. While I understand that everyone has different preferences and is at different levels of comfort with the concepts, I feel that a proof-based class would be much more fun.
Sounds like universities would benefit from having separate "learning tracks" for students of varying ability like in many high schools.
Or more realistically, taking a more layered approach to each course. So you could have the basic "code algorithm X to pass the tests" level (the kind of work most people will be doing later anyway), and then the "let's prove properties of X / come up with an alternative with the same properties" for people who can pass the first part in their sleep.
The best courses I've taken work like that already, plenty of extra challenges if you finish early. But it takes a dedicated instructor to make it work, and most of them unfortunately seem dedicated to getting by with minimum effort.
Just curious, did you already know how to code when you took your data structures class? And I mean not just write some basic programs, but really know how to code.
I ask because data structures usually comes in the 2nd or 3rd semester of a CS curriculum, and for most CS students, they can't apply the proofs and theory because it obscures where it applies in the problem domain. They can't draw the line between the theory and practical application, unless they already have written a good bit of code.
Maybe this doesn't apply to all CS students, but I would say the majority.
My experience was that most people who ripped through the proofs were subseqently completely lost when they had to actually implement things in C later. They are different skills, and downplaying the importance of implementing on real hardware and programming languages and under real conditions does a disservice.
For instance, I recall my professor being wired up about some esoteric sorting algorithm, that had better asymptotic performance than qsort. Except, the constant factors involved in a real implementation made it slower for anything but stupidly big datasets. We spent like a week going over that one...
I enjoyed my Data Structures class quite a bit because the "thinking to programming" ratio was very high. More time thinking, less time working through the mechanics of the languages involved.
I really think the two-semester approach works well. The first semester covers basics and intuition and tasks students to implement and extend. The second semester formalizes the material and tasks students to analyze and design algorithms to solve various problems. The first can be taught to first-years and the second to second- or third-years depending on when it's standard to take discrete maths.
I think the OP is great for reading after you've taken the more formal class. The formal class deals with theory and pseudocode which gives you foundation, and the OP gives implementation in specific language.
