Well, again, you are confused... and, most likely the CPython developers didn't bother. No. You don't need the Python object model when implementing Python di

Well, again, you are confused... and, most likely the CPython developers didn't bother. No. You don't need the Python object model when implementing Python dictionary. You have evidence right in front of you: std::map bindings are successfully used in its place. Why even keep arguing about this? In fact, you can implement your own dictionary, and if you expose all the same mapping protocol, it will work the same as the built-in one. Do you have to use Python objects for this? -- absolutely no. You can convert at the interface boundary. Experience shows that this works noticeably better than using Python objects all the way. Why did the original CPython developers not do it? -- I don't know, can only guess. I already wrote what my guess is. And, in all sincerity, CPython has a lot more and a lot worse problems. Compared to the rest of the codebase, the dictionary object is fine. So, if anyone would seriously consider improving CPython's performance they wouldn't touch dictionaries, at least not at first.