Learning to Code vs Learning Computer Science
I find sorting algorithms a bizarre and damaging introduction to computer science.If, as suggested, you ask an interested teenager how they sort a list of numbers on paper, they can usually give a reasonable algorithmic explanation, e.g.
"Find the smallest number in the list, and write that first,..."Then, they have to throw that thought process away, and rote learn some different and esoteric alternative - the A-level course mentioned in this article requires you to execute bubblesort step-by-step, from memory, on paper.When in fact, the teenager's own creative method (that we threw away) is much closer to how a computer scientist/coder should be thinking.