title: Why is the blossom algorithm more well used than the Micali-Vazirani algorithm
body: <p>To by understanding, the Micali-Vazirani algorithm (1980) is <em>significantly</em> better in time complexity than the blossom algorithm (1961) (Micali-Vazirani is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1109%2FSFCS.1980.12" rel="nofollow noreferrer">O(V^{1/2} E)</a> and blossom is  <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blossom_algorithm" rel="nofollow noreferrer">O(V^2 E)</a> for maximum cardinality matching in general graphs. Yet, the blossom seems to be much more widely used, even recently (<a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46297113">1</a>). Even packages desinged to solve these problems implement blossom over Micali-Vazirani (<a href="https://networkx.github.io/documentation/stable/reference/algorithms/generated/networkx.algorithms.matching.max_weight_matching.html?highlight=max_weight_matching#networkx.algorithms.matching.max_weight_matching" rel="nofollow noreferrer">1</a>). Why is this?</p>