This is the third edition of Competitive Programming book. This is the larger version with hard cover. It is much heavier. This CP3 has been superseded by the newer CP4 that is now split into two and
This is the book I've spent the most time with ever, studied the three revisions of those books over two years, and really like them and recommend them left and right. They are by far the best resource for competitive programming, and that's why it gets a better rating than if more books were available. The introductions to the algorithms and data structures are fairly superficial—which is actually a good thing, otherwise you'd be overwhelmed. To start out, you need that, and not deep understanding of mathematical proofs. I don't like the UVA problems referenced, they are unimaginative and the judge is fairly poor. I prefer IOI-style problems much more, and used other judges with categorization systems to practise.
If you're looking forward to competitive programming scene. This is one the best handbook you can start. 3rd edition has many supporting examples and more describable than previous editions. Even if you're not seeking competitive way of coding. This book can give you a strong lower/deeper bounds of problem solving paradigm in computer science.
Really focused into the practice with some sample exercises for each subject. Lacks some not too useless algorithms but has some of them that would hardly be used in a situation.
This book allows me to know what programming competition is, and helped me in order to participate such competition. However, this book is not so recommended to all of you who did not have any knowledge about programming languages or algorithms. Also, this book is lack of explanation and waste couple pages only to list some programming exercises that already existed in websites. If you just want to add hint for problems, just edit the website page right?
Good book for people trying to get into competitive programming. The explanations are decent. The actual code for implementation, however, is pretty bad compared to what can be found online. All in all, if you're a beginner, you should use this book to find out which topics you should learn, and you should use both this book *and* the internet to learn them properly.
Great book to dive deep into competitive programming world!
I love the author explaining algorithms with some example problems, leading to deep understanding in pragmatic approach. As a book companion for uva.onlinejudge.org, this book organizes materials perfectly in every learning module that shape readers thinking process to solve programming challenges. The only one I am not satisfied from this book is the font size is too small and it is quite dull to read for a long time at once. My advice is organize your learning process into small chunks and practice the marked problems first.