Beginner-Friendly Data Structures & Algorithms
Roadmap
Step 0: Programming Basics
• Variables, Data Types
• Loops (for, while)
• Conditional statements (if-else, switch)
• Functions & parameters
• Basic I/O
• Arrays & Strings (basic usage)
Step 1: Data Structures
1. Arrays & Strings Definition & usage, insert/delete/traverse/search/update, multidimensional arrays, string ope
2. Linked Lists Singly, Doubly, Circular linked lists; operations
3. Stacks LIFO concept, implementation using array & linked list, applications
4. Queues FIFO concept, simple/circular/priority/deque
5. Trees Binary Tree, BST, traversals (Inorder, Preorder, Postorder)
6. Graph Basics Representation (Adjacency List & Matrix), types of graphs
7. Hashing Basics Hash tables, hash functions, collision handling
Step 2: Algorithms
1. Searching Linear Search, Binary Search, Ternary Search
2. Sorting Bubble, Selection, Insertion, Merge, Quick, Heap, Counting/Radix/Bucket
3. Recursion Basics, recursion tree, backtracking (N-Queens, Maze)
4. Graph Algorithms BFS, DFS, Dijkstra, Prim's, Kruskal's
5. Greedy Algorithms Activity Selection, Huffman Coding
6. Dynamic Programming Fibonacci (DP), Knapsack, LCS, Coin Change
7. String Algorithms Naive, KMP, Rabin-Karp, Trie
Step 3: Practice & Projects
• Solve easy-level problems on LeetCode, HackerRank, CodeStudio
• Build small projects:
- Text autocomplete (Trie)
- Mini search engine (Hashing + Sorting)
- Pathfinding visualizer (BFS/DFS/Dijkstra)