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This was inspired by the alt-text from last week's "Ineffective Sorts" xkcd (http://xkcd.com/1185/).

It tries to sort a list or JSON by fetching code from StackOverflow until it properly sorts the input.

Nicely done. I enjoyed looking at the code.

For those of you who want to jump straight to the meat of it, go here: https://github.com/gkoberger/stacksort/blob/master/js/script...

Search down for "run_snippet_go"

FYI, you can link to a specific line on GitHub by appending #L<line no.> to the URL. In this case: https://github.com/gkoberger/stacksort/blob/master/js/script...

GitHub even adds the anchor for you if you click on the line number in the gutter. (shift-click to select a range of lines.)

Do you test the result, or just hope if it runs, it actually worked?

I found one that returned the wrong result, so it seems to just assume it works as long as it runs.

It doesn't test for two reasons:

1) I thought it would defeat the purpose

2) "Sort" is very arbitrary. Do you want to sort by key or value? Is "1000" bigger or smaller than "2"? etc

Fair; also, it's called an 'ineffective' sort, and if you tested it, it'd become effective (not efficient, of course). So, good point!

You could probably test it by taking multiple sorts from SO and then comparing results. the moment you get two that agree, you have a winner!