[HN Gopher] Data Structure Visualizations
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Data Structure Visualizations
        
       Author : yurish
       Score  : 158 points
       Date   : 2021-07-06 07:29 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.cs.usfca.edu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.cs.usfca.edu)
        
       | joejoesvk wrote:
       | this website was a life saver during uni
        
       | mihaic wrote:
       | I worked on algorithm visualizers in the past and found the
       | effort necessary to get something better than static pictures and
       | text to be immense. Every single combination of data structure
       | and algorithm needs to have a semi-custom designed visualizer in
       | order for it to be easier to understand and appealing.
       | 
       | A human tutor can take pauses when something isn't clear, but a
       | visualizer is forced to choose between checking for the user's
       | understanding and not interrupting the flow.
       | 
       | Link on BFS and Topological Sorting for instance:
       | 
       | https://csacademy.com/lesson/breadth_first_search
       | 
       | https://csacademy.com/lesson/topological_sorting
        
         | jonahx wrote:
         | Yes.
         | 
         | Most of the time, what you want is not a clever visualization
         | of a complex algorithm, but a simple distillation of its
         | essence. Static diagrams are usually simpler than
         | visualizations. And if you feel the inherent complexity can
         | only be conveyed with animation, it's likely you haven't fully
         | distilled your understanding.
        
         | laszlokorte wrote:
         | I built something similar while learning for my algorithms
         | course ate university. [0]
         | 
         | It not fully polished yet and not algorithms I had planned to
         | implement are done yet. But I learned a lot doing it and some
         | algorithms like "rotating calippers" or delaunay triangulation
         | are really fun to watch.
         | 
         | [0] https://algorithms.laszlokorte.de
        
       | amichail wrote:
       | Related: Check out my visual programming approach to teaching
       | binary tree algorithms:
       | 
       | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/545265
       | 
       | http://opsis.sourceforge.net
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Some past related threads:
       | 
       |  _Data Structure Visualizations (2011)_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19082943 - Feb 2019 (33
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Data Structure Visualizations_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15480517 - Oct 2017 (9
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Animated Data Structures_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15306593 - Sept 2017 (1
       | comment)
       | 
       |  _Data Structure Visualizations_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14064865 - April 2017 (2
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Data Structure Visualizations (2011)_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10183811 - Sept 2015 (3
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Data Structure Visualizations_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6928904 - Dec 2013 (35
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Data Structure Visualization_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2505862 - May 2011 (7
       | comments)
        
       | Gehinnn wrote:
       | If you are into visualizations, you also might find my debug
       | visualizer extension for vscode helpful:
       | 
       | https://github.com/hediet/vscode-debug-visualizer
       | 
       | Combined with time travel debugging that allows to step
       | backwards, it is really easy to understand complex algorithms:
       | 
       | https://github.com/hediet/vscode-delorean-js-debug
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2021-07-07 23:00 UTC)