Belajar data Structure

Today and yesterday.. spent some of my time .. understanding data structure by reading from the wiki..

somehow i get lost somewhere to understand the data structure,
there are so many type of data structure e.g list, array,tree , list of array, hash table etc.
however after nearly an hour reading the article i get bored, and still doesn't get the idea .. i

however today.. just now after dinner with my friend (who works in a software company).

I ask a few questions about data structure.
What are data structure?
what data structure is good for certain application (like P-Spice , Maxplus ) ?
and the most important question is : why do it so hard to understand text books and Internet article?

My friends said: data structure is a basic knowledge in computer programming, however when learn programming , usually we cannot get the concept of the topic but more focused on syntax and usually we lost there.. without getting to grab the main idea. And usually while reading books we are more focused on the implementation (coding) .

Then after a few discussion , this is the idea of main structure that has been required:

the main idea of data structure is to hold data,


the type of data structure selected determine by : application to be developed, the programming language itself , and the performance required.

what we need to know to study data structure?

1. How to store data ?
2. How to retrieve data ?
3. How to delete data?
4. How to replace data?
5. How to sort data?
6. How to relate data?

That's all , now everything become clearer and clearer. Good or not the type of data structure selected is depends on the application to be developed.