Visualising How Sorting Algorithms Work Is As Good As Any Art

Visualising How Sorting Algorithms Work Is As Good As Any Art

We don’t need to tell you that data can be beautiful — but the process of putting it in order can look pretty darn good too. A new site called SORTING aims to make people aware of just how elegant some of computer science’s most fundamental algorithms can be.

The site provides visualisations of all kinds of sorting algorithms — the ones that organise elements of a sequence into a certain order. It sounds like a trivial problem because it’s so easy to comprehend, but in reality millions of hours of research have been invested to make the process more efficient.

SORTING is an attempt to visualise and help to understand how some of the most famous sorting algorithms work… This project does not want to teach the theory of sorting algorithms, there are amazing resources, books and courses for this purpose. SORTING is for the ones who want to see these algorithms under a different light and hopefully appreciate the processing and brain power behind these piece of genius that in many ways have changed the way we live.

On the site you can visualise and compare a whole bunch of algorithms, from common implementations like Quick Sort and Bubble Sort, to more quirky examples like Cocktail Sort and Gnome Sort (really). It’s well worth a look; the results are beautifully animated and make way more sense than some of the descriptions you might find elsewhere online. [SORTING]


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