>The python dict implementation is actually extremely optimized, and used in very critical hot paths throughout the interpreter and object model (for example, `

>The python dict implementation is actually extremely optimized, and used in very critical hot paths throughout the interpreter and object model (for example, ``object.__dict__``). Additionally, python dicts (in cpython) are implemented in C, so any "slowness" there is going to be the result of the python code written to use the dictionary, and not the dict itself. Yes. Raymond Hettinger has one or more videos on YouTube titled something like "Python dictionaries" or "Modern Python dictionaries" that talk about the optimisations done on them.