Settimeout Memes

Someone literally wrote 15 lines of JavaScript to make a page fade out. You know what else makes a page disappear? Closing the tab. Takes zero lines of code. But no, we need to set the page opacity to 30%, create a spinner element with inline styles that would make any CSS developer weep, position it dead center with transforms (because apparently flexbox is too mainstream), add a linear infinite rotation animation with hardcoded pixel dimensions, append it to the body, wait 750ms, then fade everything out and remove the spinner. All of this to simulate "loading" when the function literally does nothing except waste three-quarters of a second of the user's life. Modern web development is just adding spinners to make users think something important is happening. Spoiler: it's not. The best part? The setTimeout callback has an empty action() function. Chef's kiss. Peak web engineering right there.

The code creates a sorting algorithm that's technically O(n) but for all the wrong reasons. Instead of actually sorting the array, it's using setTimeout() with the array value as the delay time in milliseconds. The smallest numbers appear first in the console simply because their timeouts complete faster! It's like telling your friends you've invented a revolutionary sorting algorithm, but you're actually just making each number raise its hand after waiting for X milliseconds where X equals its own value. Pure chaotic genius. The browser's event loop is doing the sorting for free! Computational complexity professors are currently rolling in their graves (even the ones who aren't dead yet).

Behold the accidental genius of setTimeout sorting! The code loops through an array and logs each value using setTimeout with the value itself as the delay. Since JavaScript's event loop processes timeouts in order of expiration, smaller numbers appear first in the console. Congratulations! You've invented the world's most inefficient sorting algorithm with O(max(array)) time complexity. The array magically appears sorted in the console, not because of any actual sorting logic, but because the browser's event scheduler is doing all the work. Somewhere, a computer science professor just felt a disturbance in the force.

Ah, the legendary "setTimeout Sort" algorithm. Efficiency: O(whenever JavaScript feels like it). The code loops through an array and uses setTimeout to log each value with the item itself as the delay. So smaller numbers appear first in the console, creating an "accidental" sorting mechanism that relies entirely on the browser's timer queue. It's like asking your intern to sort papers by throwing them in the air and picking them up in whatever order they land. Somehow it worked this time, but don't tell your senior dev.

The infamous "sleep sort" algorithm—where your array gets sorted by setting timeouts based on each value. The smaller numbers wake up first, the bigger ones hit snooze longer. Technically it works (sort of), but try explaining this beauty in a coding interview and watch the interviewer's soul leave their body. "It's O(max(array)) time complexity, sir!" Absolute chaos masquerading as computer science. The perfect algorithm if your requirements include "must be completely unreliable" and "please never use in production."