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Data Structure Visualizations

cs.usfca.edu

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Re: Data Structure Visualizations

#31

Post by dblacc »

wijt wrote: post #20

There are some great visualisations here. Coming up with good visualisations is tricky. I can't help but mention my own attempt at a more general framework for algorithm visualisation: http://will.thimbleby.net/algorithms/

Thats pretty awesome.. complete with source code and all !

Re: Data Structure Visualizations

#32

Post by gregfjohnson »

I wrote a web site http://gregfjohnson.com/redblackbuilder.html that takes interactive algorithm visualization another step. I would be delighted and appreciative if people go check it out and provide thoughts and feedback. IMHO It is fun and informative to play with, and a great tool for learning the algorithms.

It is specific to red-black trees, but I am considering adding other data structure manipulation algorithms as well.

On insert and delete, you can single-step forward and backward and see the tree manipulations at each step. Or, you can do the entire operation at once.

There is pseudo-code for insert and delete, and at each forward or backward step the line of code being executed is highlighted.

Re: Data Structure Visualizations

#33

Post by pelletier »

rtpg wrote: post #8
gavinpc wrote: post #2

I dream of a world where this is built in everywhere that I write expressions. It's so hard, and we desperately need it. Bret Victor has called a lot of attention to this lately, and rightly so. It's easy to forget how much we have to remember inside our heads just to work with code. And why? Much of this work could and should be done by the machine, which would free us to focus on what we want. But the need for cont…

I am totally on board with you on that one. I remember checking out this book on graph drawing, and realizing how hard a problem drawing arbitrary data structures is. And what about functional code? How do we visualize stateless algorithms? I deeply want this to exist though. I feel like, much in the same way excel secretely represents the core of what we want to do with computers, data structure visualizations is th…

My two cents: I've been working on visualising several data structures in javascript code (want watch them evolve step by step): http://pelletierthomas.com/datastructures/exec/?file=heap/he...

Re: Data Structure Visualizations

#34

Post by alok-g »

wijt wrote: post #20

There are some great visualisations here. Coming up with good visualisations is tricky. I can't help but mention my own attempt at a more general framework for algorithm visualisation: http://will.thimbleby.net/algorithms/

Beautifully done! I wanted to build something like this for so long. No more ...! :-) (It's already there now.)

Edit: And why doesn't Google find the good stuff when I am looking for it ...?! :-)

Re: Data Structure Visualizations

#36

Post by wlievens »

vdm wrote: post #35
wlievens wrote: post #28

You should check Amit Patel's blog articles, they are chuck full of interactive visualisations that are really well executed.

http://www.redblobgames.com/grids/hexagons/

Thanks for the link. I was on my toilet computer and I still haven't got the copy-and-paste business down on that thing.

I really appreciate how he writes his articles. More people should do this, with the interactive illustrations.

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