On 27 December 2012 05:53, Brendan Eich <bren...@mozilla.com> wrote: > I have a theory: hashes and lookup tables (arrays or vectors) have > displaced most other data structures because most of the time, for most > programs (horrible generalizations I know), you don't need ordered entries, > or other properties that might motivate a balanced tree; or priority queue > operations; or similar interesting data structures we all studied in school > and used earlier in our careers. > > It's good to have these tools in the belt, and great to teach them, know > their asymptotic complexity, etc. > > But they just are not that often needed. >
Not often used =/= not often needed. Seriously, I contest your theory. I think such observations usually suffer from selection bias. In imperative languages, you see arrays used for almost everything, often to horrible effect. In the functional world many people seem to think that lists is all you need. In scripting languages it's often hashmaps of some form. I think all are terribly wrong. Every community seems to have its predominant collection data structure, but the main reason it is dominant (which implies vastly overused) is not that it is superior or more universal but that it is given an unfair advantage via very convenient special support in the language, and programmers rather shoe-horn something into it then losing the superficial notational advantage. Languages should try harder to get away from that partisanship and achieve egalite without baroque. But yes, ES is probably not the place to start fixing this. :) /Andreas
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