Discussion of large systems

For myself, I like to compare algorithms. There was a WONDERFUL DOS program out there back in the early IBM PC days that took random data (or data pre-sorted in various ways) and sorted it using various algorithms, from bubble sort to heap sort to quicksort. The cool thing was that all the retrieval and display code was identical, so one could literally WATCH the data being sorted, and the time it took was affected ONLY by the efficiency of the sorting algorithm. VERY instructional. This program was called, unimaginatively, SORTDEMO. As computers got faster, it became pointless, as ALL the sorts were over about the same time they started, so one could no longer watch the data being re-arranged. I just checked, and I still have that program. Maybe I'll set up an old PC just to run it... it's sort of like a cyber-lava-lamp.