Quicksort explained IKEA-style

If we're willing optimize for aesthetic over ability to help understand, I'll nominate demonstration via Hungarian Folk Dance[1] as a candidate for the best medium to depict sorting algorithms, which I first saw during a lecture years ago when the professor pulled up on of the videos to show us in class

[1]: quicksort is shown here, but the channel has plenty of others https://youtu.be/3San3uKKHgg

I agree, IKEA instructions are great. A bit related are railroad diagrams, like the one of the JSON syntax [2].

I worked on Rubik's cube solving instructions for beginners [1] (for my children initially), but then I found it would be so much better if the instructions are IKEA style. (Then I vibe-coded a Rubik's cube 2D and 3D model, and now I stopped working on this. Something for later.) For the cube, I want to implement the algorithm, and then from the program create IKEA instruction (or a mix of IKEA and railroad diagram). That way I can be sure I didn't skip any steps in the instructions.

[1] https://github.com/thomasmueller/rubiks/blob/main/README.md [2] https://www.json.org/json-en.html

If I didn't know how quicksort works - and I had to learn, since for some reason in FP languages quicksort is typically next after "hello world" - I would struggle to make sense of the pictures, I think. However, it's absolutely brilliant as a memory refresher: it packs so much info in so little space that it's insanely efficient. I imagine it would pair well with a good textbook on algorithms.

Missing the instruction panel where the customer is attempting to follow the baffling instructions and has to use a wired phone to call the store for help.

Getting quicksort's boundary conditions right (avoiding off-by-one errors, infinite recursion, etc.) can be tricky.

Another popular algorithm that can be hard to get right is binary search.

Seems to be:

1) Pick a random (dice roll) pivot

5) Move all values less than pivot before it, all greater than after it

6) Recurse to sort elements before & after pivot

at best I can see trouble in interpreting "throw cube and shade a bar" as "choose randomly"

but if you don't understand it at all... I have bad news for you

Isn't that more of an implementation detail?

I'd guess if you care more about speed than memory it might be faster to just move elements into new array - sequence through old array appending to start/end of new array according to pivot comparison. You'd be moving every element vs leaving some in place with a swap approach, but the simplicity of the code & branch prediction might win out.

You're misunderstanding. They don't explain how to do partitioning at all. Step 3 is just tagging the elements that are above the partition element, which there happen to be two of.

I ignored the arrows and interpreted it as "move all elements lower than the marker in order to the left of the marker, and move all elements higher than the marker in order to the right of the marker". It's not clear, but if you use a bit of intuition you can come to this conclusion. Personally it took me about 5 seconds.