This should be taught in computer classes, as an illustration that O(1) does not necessarily mean "fastest".
this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2024
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It's not O(1) though. There is still a normal sorting algorithm sorting this list, it's just inside the OS scheduler.
I didn't mean to imply that it was; I was referring to countless developers I've worked with over the years who thought hash maps were the fastest
memory storage structure because they are generally O(1); they've mostly been ignorant of the fact that it's only true for sufficiently small values of "1".
the environment or operating system will ultimately have to use a sorting algorithm with a normal time complexity to determine the order of events (or it can give up and sort them incorrectly once the time resolution is not high enough)