7 Free Books to learn Data Structure and Algorithms in Java
Tags: Java, Programming, Computer Science, Books, Algorithms

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In the last article, I have shared some of the best data structure and algorithms books for programmers, but those were not free. After that article, I received some feedback about how about sharing free data structure and algorithm books? Fair enough, everybody loves free eBooks, courses, and PDFs, don’t you?

In the past, I have shared a list of free Java programming books, so I had some idea. I did some more research on the internet and checked my collection as well. Fortunately, there are a couple of good Data Structure and Algorithm books which are available for free as a PDF download or for online reading, which is what I am going to share with you all today.



In this list, you will find some of the best data structure and algorithms book which are completely free, thanks to their author and publication media.



In general, Data Structure and Algorithms are one of the most important topics for any programmer, not just for the interview point of view but also about writing good programs and problem-solving.



A good choice of data structure can reduce the complexity of the algorithm and can significantly improve the performance of your application.



Btw, If you are interested in improving your algorithms skill you shouldn’t just limit yourself to free books, you can also try some of the free Algorithms courses which will help you to learn the topic quickly.



From last a couple of years, I have personally preferred learning from online courses then books. It’s not that I have abandoned books but I mostly start with them once I have some idea about the technology I am going to learn, which I easily get by joining an online course.



And, if you can spend a few bucks on your learning then you should always go for best books or courses like Data Structures and Algorithms: Deep Dive Using Java on Udemy. It’s not that expensive as you can get it on just under $10 most of the time but whatever you will learn will pay you for many years in your career.

7 Free Data Structure and Algorithm Books for Java Programmers

If you search in Google, you will find tons of free eBooks related to the data structure and algorithm in Java, but not all of them are free to use.



This list contains books that are made free by their authors and publishers for community benefit. They are completely legal as much I know but if you think it’s not, tell me and I will remove it from this list.



Many data structure and algorithm books here might not be up-to-date to recent Java versions, but algorithms and data structure are sorts of concepts that never get old. These are the fundamental concepts and that’s why even old data structure and algorithm books are useful.

1. Algorithms, 4th Edition

Author: Robert Sedgewick and Kevin Wayne

Read Online: http://algs4.cs.princeton.edu/home/

Description: This is one of the most popular data structures and algorithms book in Java. You will learn about data structure and algorithm fundamentals, search, sorting, graphs, and strings in this book.

This book is even used in free Algorithm courses on Coursera like Algorithms Part 1 and Algorithms Part 2 by Robert Sedgewick and Kevin Wayne. I strongly encourage you to join those two free courses along with reading this book to learn Data Structure and Algorithm in Java from scratch.

And, if you find Coursera courses useful, which they are because they are created by reputed companies like Google, IBM, Amazon, and best universities around the world, I suggest you join the Coursera Plus, a subscription plan from Coursera

This single subscription gives you unlimited access to their most popular courses, specialization, professional certificate, and guided projects. It cost around $399/year but its complete worth of your money as you get unlimited certificates.

2. Algorithms Notes for Professionals book

Author: Compiled from StackOverflow

Download: https://goalkicker.com/AlgorithmsBook/

Description: This is another excellent, free, 200+ pages eBook to learn Data Structure and Algorithms.

The Algorithms Notes for Professionals book is compiled from Stack Overflow Documentation, the content is written by many experienced and enthusiastic programmers who contribute to StackOverflow.



This free E-Book is comprehensive and covers most of the things you will find in a good book like Introduction to Algorithms or a good course like Algorithms and Data Structures — Part 1 and 2 on Pluralsight.



You will not only learn about fundamental data structure like an array, linked list, binary search tree, Graph but also about several searching and sorting algorithms like Bubble Sort, Merge Sort, Insertion Sort, Bucket Sort, Quicksort, Counting Sort, Heap Sort, Cycle Sort, Odd-Even Sort, and Selection Sort.

It also covers advanced algorithms like Dijkstra’s Algorithm, Kruskal’s Algorithm, Prim’s Algorithm, Bellman-Ford Algorithm, Line Algorithm, and Floyd-Warshall Algorithms.



Apart from that, you will also learn about Dynamic Programming, Greedy Algorithms, and some coding problems from Interviews like Substring Search, Travelling Salesman, Knapsack problem, Longest Common Subsequence, Anagram String, Pascal Triangle, etc. Overall, one of the best, free book to learn Algorithms.

3. Java Structures: Data Structures in Java for the Principled Programmer

Author: Duane A. Bailey

Download: http://dept.cs.williams.edu/~bailey/JavaStructures/Book.html

Description: This is another good data structure and algorithm book in Java from Mcgraw-Hill publication and available in PDF format for download.



This book was published in September 2007, so it’s a bit date but as I said, algorithms and data structure are timeless concepts so you can still use this to learn them. It’s a paperback copy is also available for purchase on Amazon.



Btw, if you like online courses, I also suggest you check Easy to Advanced Data Structures on Udemy, one of the best free courses to learn Data Structure and Algorithms by William Fiset, a Software engineer at Google and ACM-ICPC world finalist.

4. Data Structures and Algorithm Analysis in Java

Author(s): Clifford A. Shaffer

Download: http://people.cs.vt.edu/~shaffer/Book/

Description: This is another free book to learn Data Structure and Algorithms. It was last updated in 2013 so again it’s a bit dated but most of the concepts are still valid.



The best part of the books is that it’s very comprehensive and covers topics that are not generally covered by even the best Data Structure algorithms books like Introduction to Algorithms by Thomas H. Cormen.



Anyway, the book is also available for free download in PDF format and both C++ and Java versions are available.



And, if you prefer online courses, you can also check out this list of 10 FREE Algorithms courses for Programmers to learn Data Structures and Algorithms.

5. Java Data Structures (2nd edition)

Read Online: http://www.theparticle.com/javadata2.html

Java Data Structures by theparticle.com is another free online Java book. This document was created with an intent to show people how easy Java really is and to clear up a few things the author has missed in the previous release of the document.



This book covers Array, vector, Nodes, Linked Lists, Trees, Binary Search tree, Tree traversals, priority vector, and other advanced data structures in the Java programming language.



This is again a bit dated book and if you can, I suggest you go with a more recent book on this list like the first one or just go for free online courses. You can find a lot of free online courses to learn Algorithms and Data Structure, here is another list of free data structure courses on Freecodecamp.

6. How to Think Like a Computer Scientist Java Version

Author: Allen B. Downey

Download: http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkapjava/

Description: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist Java Version is a good book to learn about programming. The goal of this book is to teach you to think like a computer scientist.

If you want, you can also combine this book with Harvard’s famous CS50’s Introduction to Computer Science — a free online course which is available on edX Team

More than 2 million learners around the globe have been benefited from that course.

7. Data Structures and Algorithms with Object-Oriented Design Patterns in Java

Author: Bruno R. Preiss

Read Online: http://www.brpreiss.com/books/opus5/

Description: This book is not available for PDF download, but you can read it online for FREE. The C++ version of this book is also available in paperback and online versions.

This book covers Algorithm Analysis, fundamental data structures, data types and abstraction, Stack, Queue and Deque, order and sorted the list, trees, binary search tree, hashing, hash table, and several other data structures in Java.

That’s all about in this list of free data structures and algorithm books in Java. You can see there are lots of free eBooks available for download as PDF or for online readers.

Unfortunately, most of the books are a bit old and might not be suitable for everybody, especially beginners.



For those, I would suggest sticking with the first two books which are both up-to-date and comprehensive enough to teach you fundamental algorithms and data structure. If you are interested, you can also check out the following resources to further boost your algorithms and coding skill.



Further Learning

Data Structures and Algorithms: Deep Dive Using Java

Algorithms and Data Structures — Part 1 and 2

Data Structures in Java: An Interview Refresher





Other Data Structure and Algorithms articles You may like

100+ Data Structure Coding Problems from Interviews (questions)

How to implement a quicksort algorithm without recursion in Java? (solution)

Difference between Counting Sort and Bucket Sort Algorithm? (answer)

How to remove an element from an array in Java? (solution)

Some Free courses to learn data Structure in-depth (Dzone)

10 Algorithms Books Every Programmer Should Read (books)

50+ Data Structure and Algorithms Problems from Interviews (questions)

How to find all pairs in an array whose sum is equal to k (solution)

How to remove duplicates from an array in Java? (solution)

How to reverse an array in place in Java? (solution)

Difference between Quicksort and Counting Sort Algorithm? (answer)

Difference between Quicksort and Mergesort Algorithm? (answer)

How to find a missing value from an array containing 1 to 100? (solution)

How to count the number of leaf nodes in a given binary tree in Java? (solution)

How to find duplicates from an unsorted array in Java? (solution)

Recursive InOrder traversal Algorithm (solution)

10 Data Structure and Algorithm Courses for Interviews (courses)

Thanks for reading this article so far. If you like these free books to learn Data Structure and Algorithms then please share it with your friends and colleagues. If you have any questions or feedback then please drop a comment.



P.S. — If you prefer online courses over books, or you want to combine these books with some free online courses then you can also check out Data Structures in Java for Noobs — a free Udemy course to start with. All you need is a free Udemy account to join this course.

P. P. S — Quick Update, Pluralsight free weekendis here and you can access all 7000+ Pluralsight courses and projects for FREE this weekend. Make this count and learn a new skill or level-up the existing one. Don’t miss this out, it’s only for this weekend. And here is the link again: