Data Structures and Problem Solving Using Java, Second Edition provides a practical introduction to data structures and algorithms from the viewpoint of abstract thinking and problem solving, as well as the use of Java.

This text has a clear separation of the interface and implementation to promote abstract thinking. Java allows the programmer to write the interface and implementation separately, to place them in separate files and compile separately, and to hide the implementation details. This book goes a step further: the interface and implementation are discussed in separate parts of the book. Part I (Tour of Java), Part II (Algorithms and Building Blocks), and Part III (Applications) lay the groundwork by discussing basic concepts and tools and providing some practical examples, but implementation of data structures is not shown until Part IV (Implementations). Class interfaces are written and used before the implementation is known, forcing the reader to think about the functionality and potential efficiency of the various data structures (e.g., hash tables are written well before the hash table is implemented).