> Can you think in terms of how data is stored in memory? If you're using a modern OS, you don't know this. The kernel remaps everything and pretends to give y

> Can you think in terms of how data is stored in memory? If you're using a modern OS, you don't know this. The kernel remaps everything and pretends to give you a linear chunk of memory. You don't know what's in the various caches and what's been paged out of ram completely. Everything is built on layers of abstraction. C is an abstraction layer that fits poorly into what modern CPUs and operating systems actually do, but everything is programmed to cater to C's assumptions so people don't need to rewrite their programs. Higher languages don't necessarily use the data structure you think they do and they can switch the implementation details based on the size. "Simple data structures" are only simple because you pick one specific layer of abstraction to work with.