My favourite TimSort story is of ex-Sun employee, Joshua Bloch of Effective Java fame. J Bloch was in audience at the time when Tim Peters presented his new algorithm to sort a list, and he was so blown away that he started porting Tim's implementation right there with an intent to commit it to the JDK mainline [0], which he eventually did [1].
[0] Some of the core JDK developers are really on another level. The JDK code, post 1.5, is a joy to read, though verbose. Compilers and Languages seems to attract a certain caliber of engineers, I think.
[0] Some of the core JDK developers are really on another level. The JDK code, post 1.5, is a joy to read, though verbose. Compilers and Languages seems to attract a certain caliber of engineers, I think.
[1] https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-6804124