An unnecessary blend of topics

While the basic data structure and algorithm content is fine, the "marriage" of test driven development/JUnit and DS&A is completely unnecessary and, to my mind, seriously damages this book. There's nothing wrong with test driven development and there's nothing wrong with JUnit. But to suggest that it's necessary to force the two together (ad nauseum!) for every single structure is just false. Really, after the first one or two test cases the JUnit stuff gets really tired and it should be obvious to the reader how to continue on with it. This is much like introductory OOD texts trying to munge software engineering principles throughout. A better title for this text would be "A Test Drive Approach to Beginning Algorithms with Java and JUnit". There are those who agree with the Beck Test Driven Development, there are those who disagree. But a linked list is a linked list. At this level, the important material consists of the basic data structures, the algorithms which manipulate them, recursion and some sense of when to choose which structure/algorithm. This material, in my opinion, should be concentrated on without the unit testing - leave unit testing to a text covering general programming best practices. A much better choice for an intro to DS&A in Java is Robert Lafore's "Data Structures and Algorithms in Java".

Other Reviews

• Excellent for what it is
• More of a book on testing algorithms in Java than producing them
• An unnecessary blend of topics
• Excellent on the basics and coding style, superficial on advanced or unusual subjects