Cracking the Coding Interview

I recommend to start with "Elements of Programming Interviews (in Java or Python)". It serves as a nice practical overview of the main algorithms and data structures and when to use them. Personally I found it more complete than the usually recommended "Cracking the Coding Interview" while being equally approachable.

Introduction to Algorithms -Thomas H. Cormen Grokking Algorithms -Aditya Bhargava Cracking the Coding Interview Book by Gayle Laakmann McDowell

Definitely has to be Cracking the Coding Interview for me

"complexity analysis" ... "stuff you would learn in a computer science degree". Does she want theory? Does she want Software Engineering skills? Does she want to be able to get a job? Cracking the Code Interview might be a fine jumping off point. It covers a lot of topics at a very readable level. If she doesn't understand it from the books angle, then she can do research on her own until she gets there. It covers stuff like "complexity analysis" in-depth enough for most people.

"Cracking the Coding Interview" (probably wouldn't even have a career without this book) "The Little Schemer" "Stories of Cats and the Lives They Touch" by Peggy Schaefer

I would buy and look into the following books: # HTTP: The Definitive Guide - O'Reilly Media # Algorithms by Sedgewick # Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen. Check out some Machine Learning books: # Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning # Computer Networks (5th Edition) I would look at the following book if you wanted more Q&A and interview questions: # Cracking the Coding Interview: 150 Programming Questions ... Tutorial memberships: # I would buy a Tuts+ account, they have been very slow in releasing new content (too bad), however they have lots of great Web Development stuff. I would read some other non-technical books: # Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age by Paul Graham # The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz # The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change The Way You Do Business by Clayton M. Christenen, # Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman # How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie If you wanted to understand some Cloud stuff, look into the Whitepapers from Amazon Web Services: # https://aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/

If you want to work for Microsoft or Google, while you likely can't get away with using your employers's $2K, the best books to read are Cracking the Coding Interview and Elements of Programming Interviews. Both books have very solid algorithm questions which you can use to go research the various algorithms and learn them. Although, I'd wait for Elements of Programming Interviews v2 which will include Java samples, as opposed to C++, but that's just me. McDowell's The Google Resume also has some useful tidbits in it.

If you want to work at those companies, your time is better spent with something like Cracking the Coding Interview and reviewing it on the weekend. If you actually go through the entire book, you'd stand a pretty good chance at doing really well on all of your interviews as far as stuff you don't use on the job frequently questions go. This former googler who's interviewed a lot agrees with me: "For instance, if you read Cracking the Coding Interview and were diligent about it (i.e., actually worked through the problems and practiced at them), you'd stand a good chance of doing really well during Google's interview process." http://piaw.blogspot.com/2014/10/gaming-coding-interview.htm... (http://piaw.blogspot.com/2014/10/gaming-coding-interview.html) If you have never studied any of these topics, keeping this book in mind as you study for your algorithms course will be definitely helpful for your grade and your future interviews!