In the context of the article (C# patterns), I'm talking about switch statements specifically as a kind of pattern matching. I disagree that hash tables will e

In the context of the article (C# patterns), I'm talking about switch statements specifically as a kind of pattern matching. I disagree that hash tables will end up with less code; the dispatch mechanism for a hash table will be significantly longer than a switch, and the compiler can create a hash table for dispatch (using e.g. a perfect hash function). A switch statement will both be faster and easier to understand and read than storing lambdas in a hash table. For pure readability, languages with good support for hash literals and lambdas may have the edge, but they'll also encourage dynamism that will hurt both simplicity and performance.