

Obama: A Bubble Sort is the Wrong Way to Go - edw519
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/business/02digi.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

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tlrobinson
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=85461>

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edw519
I had 2 different users from the same client call me today that their system
was too slow. (Had been running beautifully for years.) There were both trying
to do the same thing - sort customer orders in product sequence on the
executive dashboard. 300 records - what was the problem?

2 things: 1) It was an internal bubble sort I had written years ago. 2) They
both selected a year's worth of data.

Doh! I shoulda listened to Obama.

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foonamefoo
Unless you are doing hardcore systems programming, there is almost never a
reason to write your own sort.

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cperciva
Where's the C library function for "sort the N-byte records in the file named
'foo' which is too large to fit into RAM"?

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bayareaguy
Perhaps not in libc but on my freebsd box /usr/src/gnu/usr.bin/sort/sort.c
delivers the goods if foo has newlines.

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ivankirigin
This is the sorting algorithm I like best:

    
    
      data.sort()

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cduan
<http://youtube.com/watch?v=k4RRi_ntQc8>

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daniel-cussen
That's a nice paywall they have set up.

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apathy
Huh? The NYtimes is completely free with a login.

Use BugMeNot if you have to.

They quit charging for TimesSelect some time ago; now all of their archives
for 150+ years are freely available online.

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simianstyle
ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhbama :)

