Go rant

[Denis Koroskin]

On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 00:10:44 +0300, Jérôme M. Berger <jeberger at free.fr>  
wrote:

> Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> Walter Bright wrote:
>>> retard wrote:
>>>> I have several imperative language programming books and instead of
>>>> qsort they introduce the reader to the wonderful world of bubble sort!
>>>
>>> Bubble sort should be part of an introductory programming course, if
>>> only because:
>>>
>>> 1. it's an algorithm that gets reinvented if one is not aware of it
>>>
>>> 2. one needs to be able to recognize it, as one will encounter it a
>>> lot in production code
>>>
>>> 3. it's a great way to introduce concepts like big O
>>>
>>> 4. it's a great stepping stone to introducing better sorts
>>>
>>>
>>> I've run into bubble sort reimplementations in production code written
>>> by famous programmers who should know better. It happens all the time.
>>
>> Fro your arguments 1-4 and your conclusion, I infer you made a slight
>> typo. Let me fix that for you.
>>
>> s/should be/should not be/
>>
> 	No, he's right, it should be part of any introductory programming
> course, along with a good explanation of why it is so bad. They say
> that "for every problem there is a solution which is simple,
> elegant, and wrong", and bubble sort is as good a way as any to make
> that point.
>
> 	However, it is essential that the teacher actually *make* that
> point and not leave the students believing that bubble sort is a
> good algorithm.
>
> 		Jerome

Bubble sort is not that bad (e.g. a sequence with one element out of  
place), it's just niche algorithm.