Is sleep-sort actually bad?

Juraj K. — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 09:12:24 +0000

Today, I am testing sleep-sort. But not just any sleep-sort. I am speeding it up!

Before I begin, let me explain what sleep-sort actually is.

Sleep sort creates multiple threads for all items to sort. It sleeps the value of the item in the list.

For example, we have this list:

list = [1, 3, 2]

This is how it will work:

Now, this is about how it will print:

1
2
3

The way I am speeding it up is this guy.

We can divide the number of the item in the list. I asked Gemini for a quick sleep-sort code in the slowest languague in the world.

We have this:

import threading
import time

# A list to store the sorted numbers
_sorted_list = []
_lock = threading.Lock()

def _sleep_and_append(num):
    """
    A helper function for the thread to sleep for 'num' seconds
    and then append the number to the sorted list.
    """
    time.sleep(num)
    with _lock:
        _sorted_list.append(num)

def sleepsort(numbers):
    """
    Sorts a list of numbers using the sleep sort algorithm.
    This function is for demonstration and is not practical.
    """
    global _sorted_list
    _sorted_list = []

    threads = []
    for num in numbers:
        thread = threading.Thread(target=_sleep_and_append, args=(num,))
        threads.append(thread)
        thread.start()

    # Wait for all threads to complete
    for thread in threads:
        thread.join()

    return _sorted_list

if __name__ == '__main__':
    # Example usage
    numbers_to_sort = [5, 2, 8, 1, 9, 4]
    print(f"Original list: {numbers_to_sort}")

    sorted_numbers = sleepsort(numbers_to_sort)
    print(f"Sorted list: {sorted_numbers}")

    # Another example
    numbers_to_sort_2 = [3.1, 0.5, 4.2, 2.0]
    print(f"\nOriginal list: {numbers_to_sort_2}")

    sorted_numbers_2 = sleepsort(numbers_to_sort_2)
    print(f"Sorted list: {sorted_numbers_2}")

When I run this, it slowly sorts the numbers.

As you can see, it took 13 seconds! Now we are gonna try DIVISION. We will slowly increase the number.

Divided by 100:

The sorting is correct! Now I will add another 100 to it. It is still completely correct and even faster!

I played with the numbers and i found 455 as the breaking point - at 456 it sorted incorrectly. This is gonna differ based on the PC, so this is my specs:

Model: HP ProBook 455 G8
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600U
RAM: 16GB DDR4
i use arch btw

At this point, we cannot get faster with Python, but why stop at Python?

Of course we are gonna be using Rust.

use std::thread;
use std::time::Duration;
use std::sync::{Arc, Mutex};

fn sleepsort(numbers: &[f64]) -> Vec<f64> {
    let sorted_list = Arc::new(Mutex::new(Vec::new()));
    let mut handles = vec![];

    for &num in numbers.iter() {
        let sorted_list_clone = Arc::clone(&sorted_list);

        let handle = thread::spawn(move || {
            thread::sleep(Duration::from_secs_f64(num));

            let mut list = sorted_list_clone.lock().unwrap();

            list.push(num);
        });
        handles.push(handle);
    }

    for handle in handles {
        handle.join().unwrap();
    }

    let final_list = sorted_list.lock().unwrap();

    final_list.clone()
}

fn main() {
    let numbers_to_sort = [5.0, 2.0, 8.0, 1.0, 9.0, 4.0];
    println!("Original list: {:?}", numbers_to_sort);

    let sorted_numbers = sleepsort(&numbers_to_sort);
    println!("Sorted list: {:?}", sorted_numbers);

    let numbers_to_sort_2 = [3.1, 0.5, 4.2, 2.0];
    println!("\nOriginal list: {:?}", numbers_to_sort_2);

    let sorted_numbers_2 = sleepsort(&numbers_to_sort_2);
    println!("Sorted list: {:?}", sorted_numbers_2);
}

This also took 13 seconds to run.

This is divided by 455!

Now I will try dividing by 1000!

Whoa, it just INSTANTLY appeared on my screen!

Now, who said this is the fastest, I will go even further. 5000.

THE SORT IS STILL CORRECT!

Rookie numbers, I will try 10k!

At this point, it sorted incorrectly.

That is not stopping me from finding the EXACT breaking point.

After about 30 more attempts, I found out that Rust handles maximally division by 6760 (on my PC).

This is just the beggining - I will speedit up even MORE in the next article.

From Idea to Code: How I Built a Python Text Editor

Juraj K. — Tue, 24 Dec 2024 20:44:09 +0000

This is my first post, so it might be bad, but I will like some feedback in the comments!

The idea

So, it's February of 2023, a beautiful day, and I thought of making an app. I was thinking, and thinking, and I got the idea to make something like Roblox but with software.

But I mostly liked the idea of an IDE, and I made the name, XediX.

How the development started

Fast forward to April, 14th of 2023, I asked AI how will I make a project like that.

Because I was just starting then, I didn't do any research on Python GUI libraries, so I just picked Tkinter.

Please do not use Tkinter, it's horrible.

Open-Sourcing XediX

Github Repository
Fast forward (again) to July of 2023, I created an account on Github and started creating the repo.

Problems of XediX

The problem was, Tkinter isn't responsive and many other problems, XediX wasn't good too.

In addition to that, I took a break from coding which almost made the project die.

The comeback

But, it doesn't end here, beacuse I started again, using wxPython this time, and I released the version 4.0.

This version actually works like a code editor, with very many
features. For some reason, I started coding so much that I can't
stop coding.

Features

Syntax Highlighting
Simple Customization
[WIP] Git Integration
requirements.txt Generator
Run Code
Extensibility
File Manager
Tabs for opening multiple files
Many more, and many more to come!

What I learned from coding it

So the most important thing is, CONTRIBUTING.md, SECURITY.md and README.md on your Github are extremely important thing, and don't mess them up.

When you're trying to make a project, do some long research, don't just start it.

If you think your project is stupid, feel free to just stop it or
start again, like I did.

I also improved my English speaking/writing when coding the application.

Thanks for reading!

Some links:
The official website - Github repo

If you liked this post, please star the repo on Github! That one click does help a lot

DEV Community: Juraj K.