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Pranav Birajdar
Pranav Birajdar

Posted on • Originally published at pranav-birajdar.vercel.app

List of Visual Tools to help with Data Structures and Algorithms

As a self-taught dev, it is a little intimidating and overwhelming to learn Data Structures and Algorithms (DSA) with no prior computer science experience. However, after going through this course, I realized that DSA basics are not that difficult to understand if explained visually.

I went down the internet rabbit hole and found a few completely free DSA resources that try and explain these concepts visually.

1. DSA roadmap

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This is a great roadmap that displays important data structures and algorithms. Each data structure/algorithm node gives you a good path of what to study next.

2. Algorithms Visualizations

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The wonderful folks at the University of San Francisco have developed these interactive animations for a variety of data structures and algorithms. This visualization tool is written in javascript using the HTML5 canvas element and runs in just about any modern browser.

3. Sorting Algorithms

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One of my favorite sorting algorithms visualizations, these animations illustrate how effectively data sets from different starting points can be sorted using different algorithms. These animations show 8 different sorting algorithms on 4 different initial conditions.

4. VISUALGO

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Developed at NUS, VisuAlgo contains animations of 23 algorithms—from basic ones like sorting, to rarer ones like graph traversal. There's also a section for quizzes to test yourself!

DSA interview prep can be daunting but hopefully, these amazing tools can help you with understanding the basics.

Hope this was helpful. Here's another interview prep-related article for all you JS developers. Happy coding! 👩‍💻🚀👨‍💻

Top comments (6)

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memlayout_ profile image
memlayout • Edited

I've been working on a website that visualizes python code and created a page specifically for visualizing different algorithms and data structures: memlayout.com/algorithms-and-data-...

would love to get your feedback / thoughts!

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finalgirl321 profile image
Meg Meyers

Very nice! The only issue I have is that the right side is way smaller than the left side, and I can't see it well enough unless I zoom my screen, but then the left side is too big.

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ypanagis profile image
Yannis Panagis

Amazing! I would say that VisuAlgo helps a lot. Suffix trees are rather hard to grasp... A bunch of other stuff too.

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bishalsarang profile image
Bishal Sarangkoti

If you want to visualize arbitrary recursion tree in Python :
dev.to/bishalsarang/visualize-recu...

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neelamsivakumar profile image
Shivakumar Neelam

Great, thanks for sharing. It's much needed info to me.

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ds2code profile image
ds2code

For constructing basic Binary Tree and LinkedList, datastructurex.com would be handy.