To be honest, I haven’t though too much about sorting algorithms since first or second-year Computer Science. Nowadays if I want my data sorted, I ask the relational database to do it for me or I use one of the built-in sorting functions my programming language provides. With the kind of work we do I don’t normally deal with massive data sets, and CPU cycles are cheap, so the algorithm choice hasn’t been that important.

I was directed to Animated Sorting Algorithms, a cool website that visually shows various data sets (random, reversed, almost sorted and few unique) being sorted with a variety of algorithms, including the ol’ favourites like bubble sort and quick sort.

The visual representation is highly effective at demonstrating the algorithm’s traversal of the data and I’d recommend it to anyone that is interested in learning more about the range of sorting algorithms.

Plus the images are just plain cool, if you’re of geek-persuasion.