Most self-taught programmers don’t know where they stand and struggle with this self-doubt - Am I still a beginner? Where exactly am I in my learning journey?

You follow tutorials, copy some code, build small projects, and still wonder whether you’re actually improving.

The real turning point comes when you move from simply using code to actually creating logic. In my opinion, sorting algorithms provide exactly that opportunity.

Why sorting? Because sorting forces you to think like a programmer. It’s no longer about copying and pasting code - it’s about writing logic from scratch, and understanding how code works under the hood.

What Sorting Teaches You:

• Algorithmic thinking - breaking a problem into logical steps
• Time and space complexity - Understanding performance trade-offs in your code
• The difference between iteration and recursion
• Handling edge cases like empty arrays or duplicate values
• How to debug and analyze your own code
• Data structures – Work with arrays, lists, and more along the way

Sorting Algorithms every programmer should implement

• Bubble Sort - Simple but inefficient; great for learning
• Selection Sort - Slightly better, but still O(n²)
• Insertion Sort - Efficient for small datasets
• Merge Sort - A classic divide-and-conquer approach (O(n log n))
• Quick Sort - Fast in practice, but tricky with worst-case scenarios

Sorting Algorithm Visualizations

To truly understand how these algorithms work, check out these cool interactive tools:
https://visualgo.net/en/sorting
https://www.toptal.com/developers/sorting-algorithms

Sorting might seem like a small part in the programming world. After all, every language has built-in methods to handle it for you. But if you are just starting out, don’t skip sorting. Take the time and implement all the sorting algorithms yourself. It’s not about reinventing the wheel, it’s about learning and understanding how the wheel works.

Once you’ve written your own sorting algorithms, you’ve crossed a major milestone. You’re not just writing code anymore - you’re thinking like a programmer.