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Barrier to entry is going down, not up.

No one cares if you can do an algorithmic analysis on different ways of sorting to choose the most appropriate way. These days it's dynamically built into the function. Just call sort.

Educationally there's not much of a difference between a philosophy, math or computer science degree. All of them are doing the same thing - logic. Philosopher approaches it classically, mathematicians do it formally, and comp sci do it ad hoc or practically. Each has it's virtues when you design or program.



That's a pretty bad example, since sorting is exactly the kind of problem that really depends on the application. Eg, depth sorting objects in a game would run quicker if you pick an algorithm based on the fact that consecutive frames typically don't change that much.


Except when you need to sort a big collection of strings and the standard library sort function never returns.

What we need is good vocational education. Polytechnic schools that teach you how to code, be part of a project or lead one, design an application and so on. Then the CS taught in universities can focus on the basics of computing, analysis of algorithms, AI, programming languages, etc without the now mandatory Software Engineering 101.


Can you point me towards a sort function which will sort my data in the most appropriate way, every time?

Some sort functions might cover 99% of cases for web development, but not for other problems. The computer is not magical.




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