I have a few comments about some of the slides, feel free to correct any misunderstandings. Dictionary vs Object: Lookups in both data structures is O(1), the

I have a few comments about some of the slides, feel free to correct any misunderstandings. Dictionary vs Object: Lookups in both data structures is O(1), the difference being the hashing cost (and an additional memory lookup for heap) vs a single memory lookup on the stack (1 line of assembly). Squares list: > ... so every iteration through the list we have the potential need to size the list and copy all the data. This is no different than stl::vector which has an amortized cost of O(1) for a push_back(). It's not going to be as fast as C, but I'd also argue for a generator version instead: def squares(n): return (i*i for i in xrange(n)) One of the main reasons people choose Python is for expressiveness and not manually managing memory, although pre-allocation does seem like a good idea.