I am a student using this book for a CS2 course. This book is horrible. My main complaints are the organization of everything.

The questions at the end of each chapter don't indicate what section you may find the answers, and sometimes they refer to code in an entirely different chapter. Apparently the author assumes that you memorize every bit of code he explains in each chapter. While the reading isn't all that bad, it is poorly organized as well.

For example Recursion: When the book explains recursion, it gives you one example of turning a non-recursive function into a recursive function. Then, it assumes that you will know how to turn any non-recursive function into a recursive function. It doesn't really give you any steps on doing so, just kind of assumes that you can figure it out.

Since I recently took a technical writing class, this book disgusts me even more. Poor layout, poor design, and just overall a horrible book for a CS2 class. My instructor seems to like the book because the author actually has a sense of humor.

If you want a book that teaches you the fundamentals of Java Data Structures, then look elsewhere. If you want to laugh while reading a book, buy this one.

This is a great book if you are a competent programmer, perhaps with some O-O experience and some procedural/functional language experience. It is not for the beginner programmer, as lots of 'trivial' concepts are glossed over - which may confuse some.

It is used for 2nd semester CS, after a 1st semester course which taught Java.

As a computer science student learning data structures, I found this book to be incredibly confusing for a beginner. The examples provided are not explained well. The reader is often left to guess and fill in details. It seems like many important details were left out. If you were to try his examples using a compiler, they would never work because the author omits to tell you some important piece of info. Pieces of code appear to be just thrown in without adequate explanation of how they relate to other code. I was thouroughly frustrated with this book.

I like this book because it gives a concise presentation of the material, and contains lots of good exercises. It does contain some bad mistakes, however (such as a complete misunderstanding of what is meant by tail recursion and false statements about Java). Possibly there is also too much unexplained code.

This book was not very good. Initially, like alot of software books, the author's smug comments were not irritating. By the end of the book they were unnerving. The biggest beef I had with this text was that the author does not offer sufficient explanations for the code examples. He assumes you can just read it and then understand it. Also, in several chapters rather than presenting the facts then illustrating them in a complex example he does exactly the opposite! This did nothing but serve to confuse the issue.

The author's goal is commendable: attempt to be brief and too the point. However, unfortunately this book suffers due to little or no supporting narrative to accompany the code.

The book reminds me of a professor who is teaching a beginning class but assumes you can figure out the details on your own. The professor forgets that you don't know the details yet and its his job to give them to you.

I did not like this book.