Algorithmic Design and Data Structures

When we look at a computer screen everything seems to work seamlessly. We click buttons and are instantly rewarded with what we requested. There is a lot that goes on behind the scenes to make that type of magic happen. When we get beyond all of the hardware making that possible, there is an equivalent amount of software. When that software is broken down, we end up looking at a lot of data. Data structures and algorithms are the concept of taking and organizing that data so that the data works effectively within a program to make that aforementioned magic happen.

As a newbie to using data structures and algorithmic design its important to note that there are many different data structures. You can think of a data structure as the different ways of storing data, and algorithms as the instructions and steps that you can use for a particular data structure. They work together in tandem. Data structures can be things like lists, arrays, trees, queues, graphs and matrices. Each of these have specific strengths and weaknesses. Because of this, one data structure doesn’t predominantly become the best. They are all situational. It is up to us as programmers to learn when it is best to use each data structure type.

Let’s say we were creating a program that would run a playlist of music. We need a data structure to store all of the songs data within the program. We couldn’t use a tree because that data structure just doesn’t work for our problem. In our case, a list makes sense. But what kind? A stack would allow us to go backwards in the order that we added the songs because if follows LIFO. A queue would do the exact opposite due to it following FIFO. However, we could use a doubly-linked list which would allow us to move both backwards and forwards through data.

As you can see by the previous example, there isn’t one particular data type that will fit each problem. Therefore, when developing structured programs I would say that it is important to think about the problem and figure it out what exactly we are attempting to do. From there, we will be able to decide which data structure will be the most feasible solution to the problem. Understanding data structures and their strengths and weaknesses will help you write better programs.