Comments on: Ordered

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 20:33:33 +0000

You want it in circumstances where what you are sorting are not words. Data tends to have more structured form, and the column-A sort is much faster at runtime, being that the bit-comparison operations taking place can be done at a very low level.

By: Simon

Simon — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:24:41 +0000

Is there a reasonable context in which column A sorting would be better to use? In terms of usership, I suppose.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:06:13 +0000

I’m not sure that’s true; I think it’s more the case that — in this situation — the people being ‘pointed out’, users who expect column-B sorting, are not idiots at all, but in fact expect the correct behaviour instead of the easy-to-program behaviour, which is the case for column-A. The idiots are all on one side of the fence, retroactively justifying a poor algorithm by trying to redefine ‘correct’ for the purpose of this question.

By: charling

charling — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 11:16:40 +0000

I’ve always been annoyed with the column A sorting. I’ve always been annoyed with people who make things inaccessible to other people so they feel superior in some sort of way. You don’t have to point out the idiots unless you are an idiot yourself.

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 06:07:40 +0000

I’ll admit, though, that I’m not inclined to ‘be fair’ when it comes to that class of institutionalized asshattery. In my job I am at least dealing with people who might be considered developers, if the consider-er is being charitable, so I can get away with being a bit less user-oriented than some, but even for me that sort of response is grating and offensive.

By: Simon

Simon — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 03:29:44 +0000

To be fair, there seemed to be a lot of replies to that post that also advocated some sense of reason… But yes, that particular one was among the worst.