Bubble sort 🫧

What's Bubble Sort? 💡

Bubble Sort is a straightforward comparison-based sorting algorithm. It's called "Bubble Sort" because it makes smaller elements "bubble" to the top of the list as it iterates through it. This sorting technique repeatedly steps through the list, compares adjacent elements, and swaps them if they are in the wrong order. This process continues until no more swaps are needed.

Time Complexity: ⏱️

Bubble Sort is straightforward, but it's not the most efficient sorting algorithm.

Space Complexity: ⚙️

The good thing about bubble sort is that it doesn't use much extra space. Its space complexity is O(1), which means it doesn't need extra memory to sort the blocks.

Bubble Sort is not recommended for large datasets due to its inefficient nature. There are more efficient sorting algorithms like Merge Sort, Quick Sort and Heap Sort that perform significantly better in terms of time complexity.

Strengths of Bubble Sort 🤓

While Bubble Sort isn't known for its efficiency, it does have a few strengths:

Simplicity: 🟣

Bubble Sort is incredibly easy to understand and implement, making it a great teaching tool for beginners in programming and computer science.

Small Datasets: ⚪️

It can be adequate for sorting small datasets where simplicity and code readability are more important than speed.

Weaknesses of Bubble Sort

Despite its simplicity, Bubble Sort has several significant weaknesses:

Inefficiency: 🔴

As mentioned earlier, Bubble Sort's time complexity makes it highly inefficient for sorting large datasets.

Lack of Adaptiveness: ⚫️

Bubble Sort doesn't adapt to the input data; it performs the same number of comparisons and swaps regardless of whether the data is partially sorted or completely random.

Not Suitable for Real-World Applications: 🟤

In practical applications, you'll almost always want to use more efficient sorting algorithms to save time and computational resources.

Now, let's see how this works in JavaScript code:

Code 🖋

const bubbleSort = (arr) => {
  const n = arr.length;
 
  for (let i = 0; i < n - 1; i++) {
    for (let j = 0; j < n - i - 1; j++) {
      // Compare adjacent blocks
      if (arr[j] > arr[j + 1]) {
        // Swap them if they're in the wrong order
        let temp = arr[j];
        arr[j] = arr[j + 1];
        arr[j + 1] = temp;
      }
    }
  }
}
 
const numbers = [5, 2, 9, 3, 8];
bubbleSort(numbers);
console.log(numbers); // The blocks are now sorted: [2, 3, 5, 8, 9]

Conclusion 🗯️

Bubble Sort is a straightforward sorting algorithm that serves as a valuable learning tool for those new to programming and computer science. It's a great way to understand the basics of comparison-based sorting and gain insights into algorithmic complexity. However, for real-world applications and larger datasets, more efficient sorting algorithms like Merge Sort, Quick Sort or Heap Sort
are recommended. Understanding Bubble Sort is like mastering the fundamentals of sorting algorithms, and it can pave the way for exploring more advanced sorting techniques.