Group 9: Measuring the Energy Cost of Merge Sort: Python vs. JavaScript

[norahmi]

Group 9: Measuring the Energy Cost of Merge Sort: Python vs. JavaScript

Group number on Brightspace:

9

Group members (only names, leave out student numbers):

Norah Elisabeth Milanesi, Nassiri Mohammed, Oei Jimmy, Turanlı Gonenc

Agreed communication channel within the group:

whatsapp groupchat

Did you manage to contact all group members?:

yes

Your topic idea for Project 1:

This project compares the energy consumption and execution time of Python and JavaScript when sorting large datasets using a custom implementation of merge sort across varying input sizes.

Filename of your Project 1 blog post in p1_measuring_software/ (contributed in this pull request):

g9_merge_sort_comparison.md

Did you succeed to build the website locally and look at your blogpost?

yes

[raghavtalwar7]

Hello!

This topic could work, but there are a few things to think about carefully.

First, what's the motivation and why should people care about your results? Python and JavaScript are typically used for very different purposes, so when would developers realistically face a choice between them for sorting tasks? Think about concrete scenarios where your findings would actually influence decisions, and what actionable insights you can provide beyond just "language X is faster."

Make sure you're comparing equivalent implementations. Are you writing merge sort from scratch in both languages? If so, be aware that Python and JavaScript handle loops and recursion quite differently, which might dominate your results more than the language choice itself. Also clarify what you mean by "large datasets" and will both languages handle your target size reasonably without one struggling significantly?

I would suggest to test your setup early and collect some initial measurements to confirm that EnergiBridge captures meaningful differences between the two languages for this task.

Good luck!