This seems clearly dated. For example: > For example, binary trees are always faster than splay trees for workaday problems. I assume by this Pike means unbal

This seems clearly dated. For example: > For example, binary trees are always faster than splay trees for workaday problems. I assume by this Pike means unbalanced binary trees (if not, then red-black trees are decidedly not simpler than splay trees, especially if you need to delete). In that case, I don't really believe it. Nobody uses unbalanced binary trees anymore for good reason: they have awful performance when you do something as simple as inserting keys in sorted order.