One issue with that is that dicts can hold any hashable object, not just strings. To get a comparable binary representation for arbitrary types, you need to us

One issue with that is that dicts can hold any hashable object, not just strings. To get a comparable binary representation for arbitrary types, you need to use the hash method. So now you get the worst of both worlds - a hash call, and a tree lookup, and you need buckets for collisions. You can't special case strings either - non-string objects can be equal to strings.