Finished reading: Once Upon an Algorithm by Martin Erwig 📚

Finished reading: Once Upon an Algorithm by Martin Erwig 📚

I liked the premise of this book - algorithms taught with examples from classic children’s tales. I didn’t finish it, however - it was just too wordy (I got about halfway through). In fairness, I started with a very similar approach to my own book which for a while had a working title of “The R Handyman” with allusions to power tools, tool belts, hand tools, etc… but the metaphors felt too forced after a while and we changed tack to focus on the programming without them.

What I did read was well presented and went into some decent detail about software design, algorithms, and complexity. At some point, though, I think some sort of implementations were necessary to bring it all together, and this book lacked that.

Worth a try, but if you’re really into algorithms I’d say get a book with implementations (e.g. this one).