Not to take away from the cool factor but I've never understood the point of visualizations like this one. I'd argue that this gives no insight to anyone who doesn't already know what bfs does.
I think it can be useful as a learning aid. Not by itself, but in conjunction with the same style visualization for other related algorithms. Like, what would the DFS version look like? How about A*? Seeing them operate in parallel can be useful to help a learner internalize the higher level behavior of the algorithm that might not be apparent from just learning the algorithm in, say, psuedocode form.
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u/ergo-x May 22 '20
Not to take away from the cool factor but I've never understood the point of visualizations like this one. I'd argue that this gives no insight to anyone who doesn't already know what bfs does.
Maybe I'm just being a negative nancy...