You can do a search on the Internet and find all sorts of information on data structures. I did a quick search and came up with
this. It's not huge, but it encompasses the major data structures, such as linked lists, stacks, queues, and binary search trees. I'm sure you can find lots more.
Data structures are nothing more than objects defined to
hold data. Often, you'll create objects to do something with data but a data structure simply holds and allows you to retrieve data. Most often, the contanier doesn't know, nor care about, what it contains.
As far as getting flak, I'd chalk that one up to everyone's bias that "their major is the best." I used to go back and forth with a girl (who is now my wife) as to which was more important - CS or EE - rather a silly conversation, but we had it nonetheless.
If you do any amount of programming whatsoever, I'm sure you'll learn about data structures eventually - they're very important to almost any algorithm.
I hope that helps,
Corey
