Data structures is a challenging course. I routinely receive requests for information about how to prepare for the course or what material to review. Generally speaking, the most important thing to do is review and get comfortable with C++ and problem solving using C++. Some of the topics that are of particular importance are:
- Developing algorithms using fundamental control structures
- Problem decomposition (breaking a problem down into steps to solve it)
- Object oriented programming in C++ (classes, inheritance, and polymorphism in c++)
- Pointers (what they are, how to use them, etc.) including pointers to pointers and arrays of pointers
- Relationship between pointers and arrays
- Memory management is a biggie, so I’ll break it down into finer points
- Dynamic Memory Allocation and deallocation (new, new[], delete, and delete[])
- What methods you should explicitly include in a class that contains dynamic memory (copy c’tor, overloaded operator =, destructor)
- Difference between stack and heap (free store)
I don’t expect you to be an expert in all of the topics above, but I would expect that you’ve heard of all of them. And, at least for some of them, you’ve got a firm understanding of what they are/mean/are used for.
Here are some links to materials from the last time I taught CSE 1342 that you might find useful:
- Blog posts including links to videos
- Homework assignments
- Programming Projects
If you’d like any more info on a particular topic, feel free to drop me an email.
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