I suspect that if you took students who knew just enough programming to write a sort, but with no prior exposure to sorting algorithms, and asked them to write a sort, many would come up with a bubble sort (I think that was true of me.) If so, then it is worth mentioning simply to point out its inefficiency. Also, the bubble sort serves a useful pedagogical purpose for introducing the concept of time complexity analysis, especially if my guess is correct, as then it does not look like a contrived example.
After all, the goal of computing education is not just to churn out mechanical algorithm-implementors, and it is hard to teach good design without something to compare it to.
After all, the goal of computing education is not just to churn out mechanical algorithm-implementors, and it is hard to teach good design without something to compare it to.