It's important to understand the characteristics of various sorting algorithms so you can choose the best one

I disagree - most languages offer a sort function which is nealry optimal in the average case. You very rarely choose unless you are doing something where the sort performance is extremely important.

However, uunderstanding various sort algorithms and their intricacies is a great way to demonstrate fundamental algorithm design as well as some data structures. This is why it's important - so when you do write code, you come with a huge amount of insight into how to go about it.

> Well sure, but who writes their own sorting algorithms these days anyways?

This was (is still?) in the gnu flex program source:

    /* We sort the states in sns so we
     * can compare it to oldsns quickly.
     * We use bubble because there probably
     * aren't very many states.
     */
    bubble (sns, numstates);

Whoever wrote this should know better. Their mistake of not using the language's built-in sorting functionality would at least be forgivable if they had used insertion sort, but maybe we should blame academic institutions for exposing programmers to bubble sort in the first place. Want to show newbie programmers the difference between an O(N^2) and O(N*logN) algorithm? Fine. Insertion sort is O(N^2) too, just like bubble sort, though there is no practical case where bubble sort out-performs insertion sort, and you certainly wouldn't use bubble sort to speed up quicksort.

Understanding of the characteristics comes from understanding the implementation. I can not explain why it takes longer to insert in the middle of vector vs a list without explaining at least a rudimentary cartoon of the implementation.

Who writes their own linked lists these days?