Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!decwrl!ucbvax!husc6!cmcl2!kramden.acf.nyu.edu!brnstnd
From: brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Bubble Sort (was ALGORITHMS ANYBODY?)
Message-ID: <29486:Aug2903:26:2990@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Date: 29 Aug 90 03:26:29 GMT
References: <1503taylorj@yvax.byu.edu>
Distribution: usa
Organization: IR
Lines: 24

In article <1503taylorj@yvax.byu.edu> taylorj@yvax.byu.edu writes:
> I have been dumbstruck (and deeply saddened) to see supposedly professional
> programs which use a bubble sort.  Those who teach bubble sorts as anything
> more than an intellectual curiosity should be subjected to Chinese water
> torture.

Let's contrast this with a statement from a slightly more knowledgeable
authority:

``It would be nice if only one or two of the sorting methods would
dominate all the others, regardless of the application or the computer
being used. But in fact, each method has its own peculiar virtues. For
example, the bubble sort (Algorithm 5.2.2B) has no apparent redeeming
features, since there is always a better way to do what it does; but
even this technique, suitably generalized, turns out to be useful for
two-tape sorting (cf. Section 5.4.8). Thus we find that nearly all of
the algorithms deserve to remembered, since there are some applications
in which they turn out to be best.''

Page 379. Guess what book. (Oh, yeah, yuckies don't learn from Knuth.
Not enough mathematical training. A shame.)

---Dan
Yuckie: young urban computer science type.