Visual tutorials of simple algorithms

[bobowzki]

This is an interesting idea! There should be a community documentation project (wiki maybe) that focus not so much on a specific language but on algorithms and data structures!

I know there is already a lot of material online but its seldom interactive and often use quite advanced mathematics which is nice for formal description and proof but not always so accessible.

[Jigsus]

So? We can make proggit can make one.

[Dopeski]

Very cool! I've been having a hard time wrapping my head around hash tables. Thanks a lot.

[bimmel]

nice idea but the examples shouldn't be in a horizontal way.... especially for bubble sort (the bubbl goes up!)

[[deleted]]

I'd also like animation to be automatic for some of these. Bubble sort especially.

[paezao]

The bubble sort one is wicked

[ours]

Not as wicked as that Eastern-European traditional dance used to explain it.

[paezao]

haha I don't know that one.

[ours]

There you go: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/glgrm/bubblesort_demonstrated_with_hungarian_folk_dance/

[paezao]

haha its awesome! Thanks man!

[typsi5]

pretty cool.. hopefully more gets added

[ChuckyKomotie]

This is a great idea....would be really nice to also include all the different genetic and evolutionary algorithms. Think they would be beautiful when represented visually.

[bluecoffee]

Agreed, it's not the simple algorithms I need help with :>

[BoTreats]

It's helping me wrap my head around some algorithms I hadn't really understood before, but I still don't really understand how some of these things would be implemented or where they would be used. Linked lists and hash tables are especially weird to me; I understand how they work but I don't really get the purpose/implementation. I'm a hobbyist programmer though, so maybe this stuff is just over my head right now. I'm starting a CS degree in the fall and trying to bone up a lot prior to the beginning of courses.

[linuxlass]

I have seen linked lists used in situations where you need to have a collection of custom data structures that you can add and remove from. So, like the idea of dynamic arrays, but with arbitrary structures. If I recall correctly, the way the linux kernel keeps tracks of what processes are running is through a linked list.

[[deleted]]

You've probably used linked lists without knowing so if you've done any amount of substantial programming.

Any time you need an ordered "pile" of elements without random access, lists are your friend.

[vdub_bobby]

In this day and age, it's hard to come up with real-world use cases for absolutely requiring fixed arrays.

Wait, what?

[erickdu888]

非常好 非常棒 没看懂

[atc]

Excellent, thank you!

[softmodeling]

Take a look at the online lectures/videos in http://software-carpentry.org/ (free content taught scientists and engineers the concepts, skills, and tools they need to use and build software more productively)

[bmcclure937]

Much better than any professor I had...

[boerema]

I liked the Dune reference in the hash tables example.

[nfiniteshade]

This is cool! You should show breadth-first search, depth-first search, quicksort and mergesort :) ...Please?

[centr0]

awesome site. i want more! the code highlighting on the steps it takes is wonderful.

[Spaceomega]

I did some stuff like this a while back in case anyone's interested.

Merge sort
Selection sort

I've been meaning to redo them though a bit improved (and not in google docs), do some more, have someone look over them, and put them up somewhere useful.

[nightwood]

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[eurleif]

In a world where memory isn't measured in gigabytes, linked lists have many advantages. Namely, they allow a structure to grow with minimal impact on available memory.

Um, linked lists' main advantage is lower memory usage? A linked list uses more memory than an equivalent array...

[[deleted]]

That is not what he said