The Summer Scarf

Summer’s first week had arrived with pleasant warm winds, so most of the Temple now took their meals and meditation outdoors. But Yíwen the Artist, who loved open spaces, could not be found anywhere on the Temple grounds. Her roommate, the nun Hwídah, chose to investigate.

She finally found Yíwen weaving silently in one of the Temple’s vacant rooms, a diligent spider toiling at center of an immense web of fine gray yarn. Its hundreds of cords were being drawn from skeins scattered high and low around the room. Yíwen appeared to be making a scarf from all of them at once.

“Winter is six months away,” said Hwídah. “Explain.”

Yíwen strummed her hand gently across the cords. “Each shade of gray maps to a distinct whole number, in order of value. For zero I have chosen a color named ‘The Blackness Before Time’. Thirty-one is ‘Charcoal Smudge’, sixty-three is ‘Looming Thunderhead’, and so on, lighter and lighter, to two-hundred-fifty-five: ‘Celestial Cloud White’.

“An impressive palette for such a modest seasonal accessory,” said Hwídah.

Yíwen held up the scarf in her lap. “This is no mere garment. The pattern represents the evolving states of an array of numbers as they are sorted. Each row represents one step in the process, with its columns depicting the numbers themselves. See: at this end the gray cords are in a salt-and-pepper jumble, but with each row they grow progressively more orderly as the algorithm tells me which cords to swap. The final row’s columns will run smoothly from black to white.”

“Yet I also see one thin glittering gold thread, and another like ruby” said Hwídah.

Yíwen indicated a portion of the scarf with her fingernail. “If the current step compares two elements, I place knots of gold around the corresponding cords. If it selects a pivot value, I embellish that cord with ruby. Thus the scarf will have exactly as many rows as the sorting algorithm has operations, and the aesthetics of the algorithm will be revealed to the eye.”

“You are still seeking beauty in code,” said Hwídah.

“A thousand pardons, Hwídah, but that is not my sole purpose,” said Yíwen. “Are you, I wonder, familiar with the novice monk recently brought onto my team? His first task was to ensure that a result set was ordered for display. Yet he was ignorant of the built-in sorting utility, so he implemented his own.”

“A most unfortunate waste of time,” said Hwídah.

“Your words are surprisingly apropos,” said Yíwen. “For he chose Bubblesort, as we discovered in production when the application was given a very large result set and took several minutes to render the page.”

“You appear to be using Bubblesort as the basis for your pattern,” said Hwídah, squinting at the finished rows.

“Indeed!” said Yíwen. “I have already completed a scarf using the built-in Timsort algorithm. It is about one-fourth of a meter wide by two meters long, and I will enjoy wearing it. This Bubblesort scarf is a gift for the monk. It will have the same width, but it will be somewhat more... ungainly.”

“It will be sixty-four meters long!” exclaimed Hwídah.

“Now you understand why I must begin in June,” said Yíwen. “As you observed, winter is only six months away.”

“And what will happen if the monk refuses to wear your generous gift?” asked Hwídah.

“The same as if he fails to correct his ignorance,” said Yíwen. She rolled the scarf into a thin tube and yanked the ends to show its strength. “Sixty-four meters makes for a clumsy scarf, but an excellent noose.”