Re: Low-level vs. High-level programming (was My First Computer)

[russotto@grace.speakeasy.net (Matthew Russotto)]

In article <20030619155058.09031.00001455@mb-m18.aol.com>,
Michael J. Mahon <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote:

>This reminds me of an amusing story...
>
>Bubble sort was never the best algorithm to use for sorting, regardless
>of data set size.  However, he went on, bubble sort was apparently the
>most "intuitive" sorting algorithm, the one "invented" by most people
>when asked to write a sorting algorighm, and so it was the "best" for
>teaching people _about_ sorting algorithms!  ;-)

Odd.  I "invented" selection sort.  And anyone who intuitively "invents" an
n log n sort is a mutant, and will go far in the computing world :-)

You could probably rig things to make bubble sort useful -- make it so
data movement cost is proportional to the distance of the movement.

>(BTW, for very small numbers of items, the "repeatedly pick lowest
>and set it to infinity" algorithm ("pick and zot") is usually the fastest,
>although it is exactly n**2.)

I believe that's the selection sort by another name.
-- 
Matthew T. Russotto                            mrussotto@speakeasy.net
            June 20, 2003 is GIF Freedom Day (US)