Show HN: Sorting 50,000-element array in web browser using HTML5 web worker | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Sorting 50,000-element array in web browser using HTML5 web worker

afshinm.github.io

12 pointsafshinmeh12 comments

...with bubble sort.

Might want to mention that in the title.

I don't see how the algorithm is relevant here.

It quite easy in fact: before going asynchronous, people should learn datastructures and algorithms adapted to what they want to do.

It's wiser to limit the work your CPU has to do rather than hide this work behind high-level non-deterministic structures like WebWorkers like no work is done.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that WebWorker are useless. I just say that really costly operations are rare if you know your DS and complexities.

Oh, by the way, you usually don't have to implement theses datastructures yourself. Even javascripts have [collections](http://www.collectionsjs.com/).

Because with a half-decent sorting algorithm you wouldn't need to use multithreading for this?

On my machine with that particular 50k length array it takes 7ms if I just do "a.sort();".

Hey ! Bubble sort can be a descent algorithm when you know when and how to use it !

After all, it is the fastest sorting algorithm when your collection is already sorted ! Moreover, it has very nice properties which make it suitable for a lot of concurrent operations.

Insertion sort is faster for already-sorted data.

(Note: I am not advocating to use insertion sort!)

Is it important?

Yes.

When advocating using a new tech (or "new", as the case may be), one should find an example where the new tech is truly the best solution. (And if there is no such example, then I wonder why you are advocating it)

If they had used a half-decent sorting algorithm (say... sort(), which on the array they give runs an absurdly short length of time) they wouldn't need to use web workers for this.

There are all sorts of things where web workers are useful and better than alternatives. This is not one of them.

Not meaning to offend you, but... what's the point of this submission?

Webworkers have been here for a while now...

To show the difference between performing a time/resource consuming action on web browsers with web workers and without it.

Excuse me if you didn't find it useful.

This is neat, thanks. It would be better if the progress bar actually showed progress. A simple loading spinner gif would be better if that's all the progress bar really is in this case. I ran this on my phone earlier and wasn't sure if anything was actually happening because it took too long, and I gave up.

Ow thanks :-) The reason I used progress-bar is to show the busy time of the browser while performing the action.

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