Question

Thoroughly explain the impacts of data structures and algorithms in the development and implementation of computer programs using modern computer technologies.

Answer 1

Short Answer :- They are important because, they are what you do after you've become a computer scientist. Without,data structures and algorithms, you will be only a monkey coder.

Long Answer :- As computer scientist, our job is to perform operations on data, we basically perform the following three steps :-

1) Take some input
2) Process it
3) Give back the output.

The input can be in any form, for eg while searching for directions on google maps, you give the starting point and the destination as input to google maps, while logging in to facebook, you give your email and password as input and so on.

Similarly, in the third step, the computer application gives us output in some form or the other.

To make this process efficient, we need to optimize all the three steps. As you can guess, the most we can optimize is the 2nd step, which is where we have Data structures and algorithms.

Data structures refers to the way we organize information on our computer. With a slight thinking , you can guess that the way we organize information can have a lot of impact on the performance. Take for example, a library. Suppose, you want to have a book on Set Theory from a public library, to do that you have to first go to the maths section, then to set theory section. If these books are not organized in this manner and just distributed randomly then it will be really a cumbersome process to find a book on set theory.

This is the way a librarian organizes his books(data) into a particular form (data structure) to efficiently perform a task(find a book on set theory).

In this manner we computer scientist process and look for the best way we can organize the data we have, so it can be better processed based on input provided.