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Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 10:27:01 +1100
Subject: Re: Balanced trees
From: Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com>
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Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.python:68180

On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 10:24 AM, Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> wrote:
> 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.

And both would be utterly dwarfed by the cases where it doesn't
matter, and everyone's paying a cost (having to choose) for no
benefit.

ChrisA