Go rant

["Jérôme M. Berger"]

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
-- 
mailto:jeberger at free.fr
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