Python Programming
High School (11–12)
High School (9–10)
Undergraduate
General
Python Going Further › Data StructuresChapter 3Data Structures, Testing and Debugging
Build stacks, queues, trees and graphs, and learn to test your code and track down bugs.
Part of Python Programming · Going Further (chapter 3)
Following adds this path to your dashboard and enrolls you in the 2 courses you can open, so you can start right away.
Courses in This Path (2)
1.Not started2.
Data Structures
Lists and dictionaries are not the only ways to organise data. Some jobs fit a pile of things, some a waiting line, some a chain of nodes, some a family tree, and some a map of connections. In this course you use a stack and a queue, build a linked list from nodes, write a binary search tree and walk through it in order, and store a graph as a dictionary of neighbours. You use breadth-first search to find the fewest steps between two places, and depth-first search to find everything that can be reached. A route finder on a small map is the project at the end. The practice runs your code on real cases and tells you which results are wrong.
Testing and Debugging
A program that seems to work is not the same as a program that does work. Every programmer writes bugs, and the good ones find them quickly because they have a method. In this course you write tests with assert and with a table of cases, use the unittest module, choose the edge cases that find most bugs, and test with random inputs against a trusted answer. You learn a loop for finding a bug: reproduce it, locate it, explain it, fix one thing, and test again. A small text library with four hidden bugs is the project at the end. The practice runs your code on real cases and tells you which results are wrong.