A fun little sit-back-and-watch project that visualizes the process of data sorting. Watch as nine different sorting algorithms sort a list of integers, displayed on a bar chart, in order from smallest to largest! You also get to listen to the sounds of reads and writes! You can even control the playback. Just move the mouse or tap the screen to reveal the controls, then use the buttons to pause/resume, adjust the speed, go to the next or previous algorithm in the list, or return to the menu. Alternatively, press the space bar to pause/resume and the left and right arrow keys to skip. The following algorithms are visualized: - Bubble sort - Insertion sort - Selection sort - QuickSort - Merge sort - Radix sort (least significant digit first, base 4) - Shaker sort - Double Selection sort - Heap sort And hey, if you want to add more, just go to the "Sorter" sprite and program another algorithm! To reflect your operations on the visualization, use the custom blocks which visualize the operations as they are performed. And don't forget to add it to the list above and in the "Algorithms" menu, plus increase the number of algorithms in the "Playlist" sprite so playback doesn't stop before it. Also worth experimenting with is the dataset! There's a custom block which is, for no reason, in the Bars sprite, which generates a new random dataset to sort. In the block, there's a parameter to set how many items to sort. One click and it'll just work. Go as high (or low) as you want! Some of the algorithms featured here may work slightly differently from how they are typically implemented in other programming languages because Scratch has no native support for sub-arrays, custom-block-scoped variables, or return statements. I've enjoyed watching and learning about data sorters ever since I first learned about sorting algorithms. In fact, this is my third iteration of a visualized sorting program in Scratch! Hope it mesmerizes you too! Also, can you find the secret sorting algorithm??? Hint: there's a secret code!
