> The python dict implementation is actually extremely optimized It was upgraded from "optimized" terrible garbage to a sane attempt to do the same thing but s

> The python dict implementation is actually extremely optimized It was upgraded from "optimized" terrible garbage to a sane attempt to do the same thing but smaller and faster. In the Python world I'm sure that's "extremely optimized". In the rest of the world we know it's not optimisation unless you measure and when you measure the Python dict is mediocre (but used to be much worse) > used in very critical hot paths throughout the interpreter and object model The old even worse one was used in the very same Python "critical hot paths" for many years. Actually the earlier Python dict reminds me of "I can't believe it can sort" which is a weird sort algorithm which looks like it's a defective Insertion Sort that won't work, but is actually a working (but O(n*2) best case) sort algorithm. The old dict does in fact provide a hash table type for Python. It's much bigger than it needs to be, in order to enable an "optimization" which also makes it much slower than it needs to be.