Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by scarmig 2039 days ago
If you're working with rotating drum memory, bubble sort provides the best real world performance for any kind of data set that would fit on it.
1 comments

Do I need to specify that I'm talking about modern computers? That's an interesting bit of trivia though.
I think it's a useful way to keep in mind that algorithmic complexity isn't everything in the real world, which also applies to today.

When would bubble sort be ideal? When it's relatively cheap to read data sequentially compared to backwards or randomly, and resetting to the initial read position isn't too costly.

Now I've nerd sniped myself, and am brainstorming how that situation might arise with modern systems...