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Suggest me a book on algorithms (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I am a fresh software engineering graduate and I am looking for something to improve my problem solving skills, while I did learn about basic algorithms and data structures, I feel like I could learn further more, I know about big O, fast sorting algorithms, dynamic programming, backtracking, binary trees (Although I do not think I know everything about them), I also know about low level memory concepts.

I am sure I forgot to mention some of the stuff I also know about, but I hope the ones I mentioned give a good insights on where I should move onto next.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

If you want to improve your problem solving skills, I'd suggest solving actual problems. Data structures and algorithms can be very satisfying in their own right, but the real value is in taking a real-world problem and translating it into code.

It also depends what you want to do with your knowledge. There are domains that are deeply technical and require a lot of the things you've mentioned, but they also tend to be pretty hard to break into. A lot of software is not so deep. Any software project will have need for good domain modeling, architecture, and maintainability. Again, these are things best learned through practice.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I agree, and here's a few different avenues of examples:

If trying to get past interviews, Leet code and hacker rank can be great. They're not so great for real world problems, but not bad.
Advent of code is a good middle ground between theory and practice in my opinion.
To really learn real world problem solving, I'd recommend implement a specification, without looking at existing implementations. For example, make a basic regex engine (formal Regular Expressions not PCRE expressions), or try to implement the C Preprocessor, or the JS event loop.