On Mon, 10 Mar 2014 19:24:07 -0400, Roy Smith wrote: > In article <8761nmrnfk....@elektro.pacujo.net>, > Marko Rauhamaa <ma...@pacujo.net> wrote: > >> Anyway, this whole debate is rather unnecessary since every developer >> is supposed to have both weapons in their arsenal. > > The problem with having a choice is that it opens up the possibility of > making the wrong one :-) > > As this discussion has shown, figuring out whether a hash table or a > tree is better for a given problem is non-trivial. My guess is that if > you gave 1000 typical developers both data structures and let them pick > freely, the number of cases where it really mattered and the developer > picked the right one would be approximately equal to the number of cases > where they picked the wrong one.
You're very optimistic. In my experience, the average developer has an amazing talent for pessimising code when they think they are optimising it. -- Steven D'Aprano http://import-that.dreamwidth.org/ -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
