15 sorting algorithms in 6 minutes (2013) [video]
youtube.com43 points by akkartik 4 days ago
43 points by akkartik 4 days ago
I wrote this one, a year after that video, inspired by it
https://greggman.github.io/doodles/sort
Browsers (and machines) were slower then so it didn't finish as fast as it does today. Also, it's hard to decide what steps to illustrate/count. Is a swap 1 step (swap) or 4 (load slot N to R1, load slot M to R2, store R1 in M, store R2 in N) etc...
I'm using this other cool visualization [1] for my sorting repo [2] (thanks invzhi!)
1: https://github.com/invzhi/sorting-visualization/
2: https://github.com/ncruces/sort
Those choices (what counts as a step) are interesting because e.g. for my quicksort they make it look median-of-3 is about as fast as median-of-ninthers (it's not it's significantly faster), which would make my strategy of starting with median-of-3 and doing a round of ninthers for pathological input a bit absurd.
The visualization was still incredibly useful (I found) in getting a sense that the algorithm is working correctly. You can clearly see how median-of-ninthers is working in that gif.
This is such a classic video. I love showing it to people. It even made its way into non-software circles due to its satisfying sounds, here is a big streamer (who has nothing to do with software) reacting to it: https://youtu.be/4ItTg2ibo7c
Finally I get to tell one of these personal stories: I met Timo at a GPN in Karlsruhe because he had a cool LED strip project on him. He showed me some videos of other projects he had done and they had that distinct sound ...
say what you like about bogo sort, it has the best music
looks frighteningly deterministic!
now _that's_ oddly satisfying :D