When we first
thought in a tutorial, we wanted to
do something that helps in the learning
of the students that
are going to take this course in
a no longer future. Why? You can here
about linked list, stacks, queues, and
other data structures, we know that all these
things works. The question are: How it
works?, What is happening internally?, What
steps are follow to accomplish that?.
As programmers we want to know how
it works, this is simple, we call it
programmers curiosity, but we didn’t see
these working as future student can.
Having this objective in mind is
that we decide to build a tutorial.
But not only a tutorial, we did
it using an animation process where
the user can see what is happening
internally in the structure. We also provide
a brief explanation and the code that
makes these possible to the user. Almost
all student that knows programming, knows
what is a linked list. We know that
it has a pre pointer and a next
pointer, but we don’t know what is
the process to follow when a new
node is inserted for example. All these
doubt we put it together only for
one reason. We want to give the student
the support to understand these structures
Basically our objectives was to provide
the student with the main functions
that make a linked list and a
stack work.
Our program was done in a JAVA programming environment . This decision was took in terms of what programming environment supports more the graphics without getting that complex. We start the program in a Visual J++ environment, but we face maybe a common problem in these type of things. The different versions of compilers. At the end we finish using Winedit. With the help of the different books that We want to give credit. These are the Core JAVA 1.1 , The Black Art of The JAVA Game Programming and also the Learn JAVA Now of Microsoft Press. These three books were very important in the process of creating this tutorial.
The program in terms of linked list provide five bottom. These are: Reset, that puts the cursor at the beginning of the list; Next, that moves the cursor to the next node in the list; Remove, this brings out the process of removing a node out of the list(all these animated); Append, this process always put a new node at the end of the list; Insert, this process insert a new node where the cursor is located. These thing are all in animation to support as we said before the understanding of the user. The Stack work the same but with the respective functions(Pop, Push, Top).
Our main purpose
was to teach the internally movement of
these structure. We think that our
goals were accomplished. This program helps
in the education of future Data Structure
students. We will to finish with only
one thing. We really want to see this
tutorial fundamental part of the education
of ICOM4035. We will appreciate the
consideration of these Web page to
be linked to either Dr. Thomas Noack
page or amadeus home page. If this is
done we will fulfill our goals as
expected.
Download a copy in word 97 format.