The software development final exam: Algorithms and Data Structures

The good thing is @cpervica has suggested standard textbooks, as opposed to suggesting obtuse texts unreachable to a beginner.

Algorithms:

I think a beginner might be confused by Sedgewick's terse coding style.

Computer Architecture and Operating Systems:

I haven't read either of the books. I would add http://bcs.wiley.com/he-bcs/Books?action=index&itemId=04... to the list. Like most of the OS books, you won't get a full picture of the OS from this book, but you will know the topics which will help you understand a real OS. Also most of the non-recent book won't cover flat memory model http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_memory_model That is not to say knowing about segmentation is going to hurt you.

Mathematics:

I haven't read any of the books. From TOC, the cryptography and the statistics book looks good. I would recommend skipping cryptography maths for starters. If you are a beginner, an application level understanding of cryptography is what you need.

Networking and Systems:

Tanenbaums books loves history and theory. It's a nice book nevertheless. Once you are done with it, you should read Stevens' book on TCP/IP http://www.kohala.com/start/tcpipiv1.html

If you find time, you should read the second volume as well: http://www.kohala.com/start/tcpipiv2.html

For databases, I read this book:

http://www.amazon.ca/Database-System-Concepts-Abraham-Silber...

This is not a very interesting book, but it does cover the fundamentals very well. You will need a bit of will power to read it.

It is an equality relationship why would they need a new symbol?

f(n) = O(g(n)) .. n^2 = O(n^2) and n = O(n^2), so n = n^2 which is not making any sense

You are right it doesn't make any sense. Try n^2 = O(Selection_sort(n)),O(Bubble_sort(n)) = O(Selection_sort(n)), n^2 = O(Bubble_sort(n)). Nice and transitive the way it should be.

  Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective

is superior to the widely mandated

  Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach

And this approach is the second problem. A few questions of this kind are good; for one, I like Q.1 (trivial if you know the subject, puzzling if you don't as the proposition is just nonsensical as a mathematical problem). But some other questions are tests of memorization, sometimes for not too relevant information. For one thing, you ask to "name" heapsort operations. I have long forgot those names, BUT I know the fundamental ideas of heaps and heapsort, and writing the full heapsort (even in paper) is a simple exercise of coding... but I wouldn't still remember those names.

Also, I would spend significant time writing this code (and also deducing the complexity if I don't know it by heart), compared to somebody who just crammed through textbooks. (And yes, it is possible to memorize this kind of information in a few days of cramming; if those final exams have schedules known well in advance and they are spread at least 3-4 days from each other, this pretty much cancels the advantages you mention.)

You seem to be dismissive of "practical programming ability"; I agree that code as answer to written questions has issues -- coding problems are better in a whiteboard test, interacting with the examiner. Or with careful restrictions of language etc. But it seems wrong to have questions that penalize (due to time restrictions) people who can deduce the answer with some coding or calculation, and reward people who just memorized the subject... for one thing, this memory won't last forever, unless you become a professor to keep "practicing the theory" on a daily basis. But more important, the ability to deduce the answer is very revealing of somebody's knowledge of the really fundamental concepts. Show me a CS graduate who knows by memory the bipartite graph algorithm, and this may be just some guy that has study discipline and good memory but is clueless about the core ideas of graphs and will have forgotten everything after a couple years of graduation. Now take somebody who can sketch the code for bipartite testing, even when given a problem that does not use the word "bipartite" or even the word "graph" -- so the student needs to identify the proposed problem as a specific graph problem, and then deduce the algorithm in order to solve the graph problem -- and that's somebody I would hire, either for a software engineer position or for a professor position.