Morgan McGuire on Twitter: “It wasn’t until I’d *taught* algorithms a few times that I finally understood why sorting is in the CS curriculum. Unfortunately, most curricula don’t explain this! It is NOT because sorting is an important algorithm to learn to implement…”
Posted by jpluimers on 2026/10/14
We teach sorting in algorithms classes because it is a simple and easy to motivate EXAMPLE of different algorithms for accomplishing the same task. The solution isn’t the point in the classroom. The problem is the point…
I fully agree with the thread starting at [Wayback/Archive] Morgan McGuire on Twitter: “It wasn’t until I’d taught algorithms a few times that I finally understood why sorting is in the CS curriculum. Unfortunately, most curricula don’t explain this! It is NOT because sorting is an important algorithm to learn to implement…”
The rest of the thread is archived in bits because of ThreadReaderApp failing, and not all archival sites archiving the full thread based on a single tweet from the thread.
- [Wayback/Archive] Morgan McGuire on Twitter: “Unfortunately, what we’ve also done by using this convenient example of sorting and its many possible solutions is created generations of programmers who mistakenly think that sorting is an important open problem or something that matters for performance very often.”
- [Wayback/Archive] Morgan McGuire on Twitter: “In conclusion, the point of the sorting lectures you had in college was the lessons you learned along the way, not the sorting. I’m really sorry we didn’t tell you that at the time!”
All because of [Wayback/Archive] Ryan Winchester on Twitter: “As a 41 year-old software developer do you know how many times I’ve had to manually implement QuickSort? Zero. Maybe we should test for more useful skills like taking a slow SQL query and optimizing it.”.
–jeroen
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