3 ms·
Reading the mailing list end-to-end actually shows how much research Tim did before designing it. To suggest that the "academics" had no clue is extremely disin
by ajbonkoski 8y ago
Reading the mailing list end-to-end actually shows how much research Tim did before designing it. To suggest that the "academics" had no clue is extremely disingenuous. Worse, it misleads the next generation of great would-be algorithm designers into thinking that studying the research is foolish. Study of both the theoretical and the practical are hugely important; ignore either at your peril.
- nas 8y agoI believe Tim Peters was trained as a mathematician. He is good at analyzing algorithms. Often he will post on the Python lists about the subtleties of floating point behavior. As you say, he read a much of recent research on sorting before coming up with TimSort. He special ability I think is making the "engineering" tradeoffs to come up with an algorithm that works well on real-world data.
- ajbonkoski 8y agoYou believe or you know? Nothing I've read suggests that. Please don't advance ideas like that without giving proper justification; this is exactly how myths start.