Grokking Algorithms

By: Aditya Bhargava

Narrated by: Derek Lettman

Length: 3 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's Summary

Grokking Algorithms is a friendly guide that teaches you how to apply common algorithms to the practical problems you face every day as a programmer. You'll start with sorting and searching and, as you build up your skills in thinking algorithmically, you'll tackle more complex concerns such as data compression and artificial intelligence. Learning about algorithms doesn't have to be boring!

An algorithm is nothing more than a step-by-step procedure for solving a problem. The algorithms you'll use most often as a programmer have already been discovered, tested, and proven. If you want to understand them but refuse to slog through dense multipage proofs, this is the book for you. This engaging guide makes it easy to learn how to use the most important algorithms effectively in your own programs.

Contents include:

• Introduction to algorithms
• Selection sort
• Recursion
• Quicksort
• Hash tables
• Breadth-first search
• Dijkstra's algorithm
• Greedy algorithms
• Dynamic programming
• K-nearest neighbors  

This accessible introduction is suitable for self-taught programmers, engineers, or anyone who wants to brush up on algorithms. Each carefully presented example includes helpful diagrams and fully annotated code samples in Python.

Aditya Bhargava is a software engineer with a dual background in computer science and fine arts. He blogs on programming at adit.io.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio. 

©2016 Manning Publications (P)2016 Manning Publications

the book is not good in audio format

the book is good, but the author keeps talking about things from graphs or from things you should be seeing on the printed format which is not part of the audio book.
I recommend this book in the printed format but I highly advice against the audiobook format

Good, but feels very surface-level

I wish there were more books like this. This was well-written and kept my attention. That being said, it’s hard to say how much concrete information I’m walking away with after listening to this.

Great Book

A great book and easy to understand. The author is really breaking down a complex topic into small understandable chunks. A must read for any newbie on algorithms. However, I went back to buy the printed version. I don't recommend having an audiobook to learn algorims. Yes, I mad this mistake but you should not do the same.

Great introduction to algorithms!

Very pedagogical and interesting book on algorithms! Absolutely loved it. You get a pdf with all the code and pictures, so it’s totally fine as an audio book.

not a stand alone audiobook

They keep referring to the pdf!!! This is not a standalone book. Also the algorithms seem randomly selected

Too Many Omissions

Too many items are noted as "not included" in the book, which makes this book unnecessary short and anemic in content.

also, the narrator never calls out the figure # for stuff being referenced

Good book, but terrible as an audio book

This book relies off of illustrations. You can't really see the illustrations if you're listening to it as an audio book. The illustrations are a pretty important part of the book, so it made it difficult to understand. I suggest reading it as a pdf or buying the actual book.

Like computer yoga, or a meditation guide

The content is delivered directly and slowly. If you're completely new to programming, I recommend this book once a month while working on some textbook projects. This is not a comprehensive guide to algorithmic problem solving, nor is it an exploration of implementations. There will be a point when the utility of grokking algorithms diminishes.

I would prefer an audio book form of stepanov and rose, but this is still a welcome addition to my cassette collection.

Not suited for audiobook, don’t waste your time and money

To many references to code that make the read really hard. “… look like this [pause one second where some code snippet is obviously presented in the book] …” then the next paragraph starts. Some books shouldn’t be audiobooks 😕

Seminal Book on Algorithms ruined by lack of code

Although the narrator's performance is a little robotic, it's truly fine. But what absolutely removes almost all utility for this book is that the narrator skips all the code examples in the book. The code examples are vital to understanding the concepts in the book, so this really makes listening to the audiobook close to useless. Really disappointed.

A helpful audiobook.. but the attached PDF is poor

Okay, I only recently purchased this book and have been listening though as it is well paced, clearly worded and interesting topics. I think the author has chosen some accessible problems and examples to keep interest without distraction and I am overall very glad I made the purchase.

However: The pdf that comes with the audiobook is ONLY the images from the original book. There are broken links in the to what I assume is an online version of the book. This is a problem as the detail in the book are not complemented with what is provided and eventually I was forced to ALSO purchase the digital version of the textbook to accompany the audiobook. I feel somewhat irritated that I had to buy this book twice as a result. So my recommendation is buy the text book first and then only purchase the audiobook if you feel it would be of benefit to have the information read out as you code.

Very good intro into algorithms (if you have pdf)

Very good intro into algorithms, covers the concepts of many different algorithms without bogging down into specifics too much. Because of this, it is a great starting point as it establishes the overall picture well.

Only go for the audiobook format if you have the pdf and a python ide or code editor in front of you. It will help greatly to attempt implementing the code and ideas of the book into code as you are following along.