Bubble sort Memes

The interviewer asks for a simple array sort of just 0s, 1s, and 2s (literally the easiest sorting problem ever), and this poor soul immediately jumps to Bubble Sort—the algorithmic equivalent of using a sledgehammer to hang a picture frame. For the uninitiated, this is a classic interview problem with a O(n) solution—just count occurrences and rebuild the array! But under pressure, our brain defaults to the first sorting algorithm we learned in CS101. The interviewer's face says it all: your grandma with a walker would cross the finish line before your O(n²) bubble sort even gets halfway through. Nothing captures the interview panic spiral quite like forgetting that you're sorting just THREE UNIQUE VALUES while proposing an algorithm from the stone age of computing.

Behold the world's least efficient sorting algorithm: Reddit Sort! Instead of carefully planned comparisons, we just let internet strangers upvote whatever random nonsense catches their eye each day. The array is never actually sorted - it just keeps swapping elements based on which meme, pun, or outrage bait gets the most attention. And of course there's always that one element ("officer balls") that has no business being in the dataset but somehow gets upvoted to the top anyway. Big O notation? More like Big Oh-God-Why notation. This is what happens when you let democracy decide your computational complexity.

College professors living in 2010. Rejecting modern frameworks and buzzwords with a dismissive hand, but absolutely glowing at the prospect of making students implement bubble sort for the 47th time. Nothing says "preparing you for the industry" like coding algorithms nobody's written from scratch since the Bush administration.