Go rant

[retard]

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 09:21:55 -0800, Charles Hixson wrote:

> Denis Koroskin wrote:
> 
>> 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.
> 
> I believe that I was taught that a bubble sort was optimal for lists of
> fewer than about 25 elements.  I.e., where n is very small, the overhead
> for the other sorts wasn't worth it.

Nope, that's big time bs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Bubble_sort#In_practice -- I wasn't even taught bubble sort in school 
because insertion sort performs much better and is about as easy to 
comprehend.