For small sets, or small-ish sets when you are coding quick, don't have a convenient standard library sort to hand, and are prioritising correctness over absolute performance.

Though in reality almost never: you almost always have a convenient built-in sort that is as quick & easy to use (likely quicker & easier), and in circumstances where the set is small enough for bubblesort to be just fine, the speed, memory use, or other properties of what-ever other sort your standard library uses aren't going to be a problem either.

As others have pointed out, sometimes it is useful for partial sorts due to the “always no less sorted than before at any point in the process (assuming no changes due to external influence)” property.

wrt:

> If you make each frame of the animation one pass of bubblesort, the particles will all move smoothly into the right positions. I couldn't find any examples in the wild,

There are hundreds of sort demos out there, both live running and on publicly hosted videos, that show the final positions by hue, getting this effect. Seems odd that they couldn't find a single one.

EDIT: actually, I can't find any of the rainbow based sort demos I was thinking of, a lot of promising links seem dead. I take back my little moan!