See how six sorting algorithms actually differ
Bubble's slow crawl, quicksort's partitioning, merge's divide-and-conquer — replayed as bars so the idea lands visually.
Tools used in this guide
The job
Textbooks describe the algorithms; watching them is what makes the difference stick. The tool traces each compare/swap/write on a shuffled array and replays it as animated bars.
Pick, shuffle, run
Choose an algorithm and array size (5–200), shuffle, run. Bars flash on comparison and jump on writes — bubble sort visibly sweeps the biggest unsorted element rightward every pass.
- Same shuffled array + different algorithm = the honest comparison.
- Try 200 bars on bubble, then on merge — the step counts speak for themselves.
What it teaches (and doesn't)
You see comparison structure, not wall-clock speed — merge looks busy but does fewer total operations than bubble. Real performance also depends on data distribution and hardware; nearly-sorted input flatters insertion sort, for instance.