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Is this really a new algorithm? I'm fairly sure my "Algorithms" professor* taught us this sorting algorithm twenty years ago. To be fair I don't think it was ta

Is this really a new algorithm? I'm fairly sure my "Algorithms" professor* taught us this sorting algorithm twenty years ago. To be fair I don't think it was taught as a serious contender, not something to be implemented in production in the future, but instead as the baseline to measure the other algorithms, and also as teaching tool to introduce the fact that computers can't "instinctively look over" the whole set (like a human sorting a small set would do) but instead have to purposefully compare everything to everything. *: (or maybe it was my "Data Structures" professor, I don't remember which of those basic courses covered the basics of sorting algorithms)

chmod775 5y ago
Pretty much everything you, I, or someone else is likely to come up with, someone else will have thought of before. That's why we usually attribute inventions and discoveries to the first people to bring to market or publish. Given the simplicity of this, obviously other people have found this algorithm before. But this might be the first publication mentioning it.
- andi999 5y ago
  The 'that's why..' part seems non sequitor to me.
BoiledCabbage 5y ago
I obviously wasn't in your class, but what your describing sounds more like the role 'bubble sort' plays in comp sci education. And while this looks similar to bubble sort it is very different in behavior.
- SkeuomorphicBee 5y ago
  I distinctively remember that bubble sort was presented later. We started with this naive double loop (and the naive simple sort as a sort into a different copy alternative) and incrementally added optimisations to reach the various named algorithms
robotresearcher 5y ago
The article does not claim it is new. The introduction says: > It is difficult to imagine that this algorithm was not discovered before, but we are unable to find any references to it. the author would almost certainly agree with your other points, and has some other interesting things to say in the article.

chmod775 5y ago

Pretty much everything you, I, or someone else is likely to come up with, someone else will have thought of before. That's why we usually attribute inventions and discoveries to the first people to bring to market or publish. Given the simplicity of this, obviously other people have found this algorithm before. But this might be the first publication mentioning it.

andi999 5y ago
The 'that's why..' part seems non sequitor to me.

BoiledCabbage 5y ago

I obviously wasn't in your class, but what your describing sounds more like the role 'bubble sort' plays in comp sci education. And while this looks similar to bubble sort it is very different in behavior.

SkeuomorphicBee 5y ago
I distinctively remember that bubble sort was presented later. We started with this naive double loop (and the naive simple sort as a sort into a different copy alternative) and incrementally added optimisations to reach the various named algorithms

robotresearcher 5y ago

The article does not claim it is new. The introduction says: > It is difficult to imagine that this algorithm was not discovered before, but we are unable to find any references to it. the author would almost certainly agree with your other points, and has some other interesting things to say in the article.