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Comment by breckinloggins | Hacker News Reader

I just want to say how much I love this blog. I'm a self-taught programmer, which means that I tend to learn algorithms as I feel I need them (a big problem given that I have to know what I don't know before I can know it!). I've recently gotten more into computer science for its own sake, but books and papers about algorithms are often dry and unmotivating.

The pieces on this blog are always entertaining and clearly justify the excitement and purpose of the algorithm under discussion.

Computer science and the STEM world in general needs more stuff like this, and I'm happy that we are in fact seeing more and more of it. Well done.

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> books and papers about algorithms are often dry and unmotivating.

If you don't like standard textbook treatments like CLRS, you might like these: Introduction to Algorithms - A Creative Approach by Udi Manber (out of print but worth getting). Algorithm Design by Klein and Tardos. How to Think About Algorithms by Jeff Edmonds. Jeff Erickson's lecture notes on algorithms: http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/~jeffe/teaching/algorithms/

Jon Bentley's Programming Pearls is about what I'd call algorithm engineering. The algorithms are never anything fancy but it's a good example of algorithms applied to real-world problems. It's possibly the best single book on programming I know. Make sure to do all the exercises.

Thanks! I'll take a look. It's not so much that I don't like them, it's that I seem to be able to "get into" a paper or textbook after I understand what's so cool about what they're talking about.

In that case Programming Pearls will probably be a breath of fresh air. It doesn't start from the algorithm but from the problem to be solved and tends to first dip into the most naive solution before rationalizing why specific approaches are important.

From that perspective Skiena's book is also good, as it offers war stories where you can see first hand some of the implementations of the algorithms mentioned.

Cool! I've now ordered it based on this comment alone.. :-)

I'd like to shove in Skiena's Algorithm Design Manual. Very readable, great coverage.

I can't express how awesome it is to hear that.

I love your blog. That is all. Please keep it up -- you do an excellent job and have an appreciative audience.

I'm also self-taught but find not all comp. sci. books are dry, particularly those with a Bell Labs background. Something about their writing style perhaps.

You may want to peruse Aho and Ullman's excellent C edition of Foundations of Computer Science. (That's Aho as in awk.) What you need for a good grounding all in one place. You can still pick up a paper edition if you want but they've also made it available as PDFs.

http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0716782847/mqq-20 http://i.stanford.edu/~ullman/focs.html

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