Why "Algorithms" and "Data Structures" are treated as separate disciplines?

Posted by Pavel Shved on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Pavel Shved
Published on 2010-03-14T10:38:53Z Indexed on 2010/03/14 10:45 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 408

Filed under:
|

This question was the last straw; and I've been wondering for a long time about it,

Why do people think about "Algorithms" and "Data structures" as about something that can be separated from each other?

I see a lot of evidence that they're separated in programmers' minds.

  • they request "Data Structures & Algorithms" books
  • they refer to "Data Structures" and "Algorithms" as separate university courses
  • they "know Algorithms", but are "weak in Data Structures" (can't find the link, sorry).
  • etc.

In my opinion "Data Structures" are algorithms, since the concept of "Data Structure" is about Algorithms to operate data that go in and out of the structures. But the opinion seems not a mainstream. What do I miss?

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about algorithm

Related posts about data-structures