HackerTube.dev

Barack Obama - Computer Science Question

weedipikia · 1.2M views · 2008-01-26 · 1:25

Open on YouTube ↗

If playback is restricted in your region, try opening the original video. Use Mark watched to add it to your marked videos.

Overview

A one-minute clip from Barack Obama's 2008 Google visit in which Eric Schmidt asks him the most efficient way to sort a million 32-bit integers. Obama answers that bubble sort would be the wrong choice.

On Hacker News

Used as a joke or aside about bubble sort and as evidence that Obama was tech savvy, not as something recommended for its content.

Discussed on HN; no positive recommendation is recorded in this export · HN mentions 2013–2019

Topics

Algorithms & data structuresUS politics & electionsTech pioneers & interviews
Search by tags
obamasorting algorithmsgooglepoliticshumor

What people said

dickeytk · 2019-11 · Joke / meme

I get your point, but why would you pick bubble sort? That’s one any engineer should be able to implement without any help. It’s the more complex/useful ones worth discussing. Even Obama knows this: [VIDEO]

Read the original HN comment ↗
xxs · 2018-05 · Joke / meme

Bubble sort is never a good choice unless so extremely lazy or what to impersonate Obama...[0] There are dual-pivot quicksort, smooth sort (in-place, based on Leonardo numbers and takes O(n) time to process a presorted array and O(n log n) in the worst case, and achieves nearly-linear performance on many nearly-sorted inputs), TimSort (that's stable as plus). Morealso changing stable to unstable sort is usually a very bad move. [0]: [VIDEO]

Read the original HN comment ↗
mortdeus · 2013-04 · Reference

While I'm sure the President doesn't research all laws he signs, Obama is somewhat tech savvy. [VIDEO] I wouldn't be surprised if he made the threat based on his own personal moral ideology.

Read the original HN comment ↗

Sources

Video by weedipikia, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.

HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

Views, duration and playback status refresh separately from the published catalog. When an update fails, existing data remains visible.

Selection checks
  • SaaS & AI candidates: Topic keywords do not match
  • Editor-approved picks: Editorial review is required

Rule matches identify candidates. They do not guarantee video quality or financial results.

About the library and its sources