I’ve described the algorithm in a fair bit of detail, and shown sample implementations. It’s a fairly trivial matter to take the information in this article and extend it to sort lists and arrays of strings.

Do your own homework, you might learn something!

Down the track I’ll add an async sample to the F# code.

In the case of a simple algorithm like the Bubble Sort, the benefit of reading this page vs the Wikipedia entry is probably nothing. Will this remain the case for the other algorithms? No I don’t think so.

Wikipedia articles, while helpful, tend to be written in a manner which makes it sound like the author is trying to sound smart. That might sound harsh, but that’s how it feels to me. The entries attempt to be too formal, and use a bit too much jargon for my liking. Also, as you get to some of the more complicated algorithms, the entries on Wikipedia aren’t easily grokked, or they’re too high-level to really cover what’s going on.

My goals:

1. To cover as many algorithms as I can in detail (Wikipedia is hit and miss in this regard).
2. Avoid using jargon when it’s not necessary and make it as clear and as readable as possible.
3. Give working samples of code in multiple languages (both imperative and functional).

On top of this, I am working on WPF-based visualiser (not sure if I’ll make it an EXE or an XBAP) which will animate the process of each of these sorting algorithms. This will take a bit of time and probably won’t get released until I’ve covered a few algorithms.

So, with all that in mind, I want it to be a place where people can come and read about all the algorithms, and get full coverage, in laymans terms, with an interactive visualisation. No site that I have found so far has that, including Wikipedia.

Of course, if nobody reads this stuff it still doesn’t matter. Because I will have learned a lot, and brushed up on my understanding of all these algorithms along the way. So I’m still ahead
Cheers bud!

How is this any different from a really good Wikipedia entry on Bubblesort? In fact the entry there is pretty similar. I guess what I’m asking is, why would anyone come here to find out about sorting rather than going to Wikipedia?

Given Wikipedia’s popularity, how do you plan to differentiate your posts in this series from the general stuff already out there? I know it’s probably quite tough to depict that thinking in such a simple sort, but I was wondering what your plans were on this early on?

Great read mate – flows nicely!
Cheers,
Rob

@gav: Thanks for the comments dude. I realise that most people will know this one, but it was low hanging fruit which I think people are happy to read about because it’s a “refresher”. As time goes by the algorithms will get more interesting, and hence a lot harder to digest

Looking forward to the rest in the series.

On an unrelated note, I’ve just noticed that not all the text colouring comes through on the feed.  The pre formatted code blocks are fine (though the grey box around them is missing), but the red and blue highlights in the sort run through are missing.