The lost art (Was: The VAX is running

[Sridhar Ayengar]

der Mouse wrote:
>> I've run into "CS" graduates from the university who supposedly have
>> learned about really "good" sort algorithms (usually
>> "Shell-Metzner"), without understanding which situations an optimized
>> "bubble" is better for.
> 
> I'm not sure a CS graduate _should_.  That's less an aspect of the
> theoretical discipline CS is than of the correpsnoding practical
> discipline (programming, software engineering, pick your favourite term
> for it).  Learning about the difference between shellsort's complexity
> and bubblesort's and heapsort's is important.  But I'm not sure I'd
> expect a theoretician to correctly choose the right one for any
> particular application.

As far as I can tell, that would be exactly the right type of problem 
for a theoretician.  It's a pretty straight comparison of the 
average-case and best-case big-O.

Peace...  Sridhar