[MAL]
I just wanted to hint at a problem which iterating over items in an unordered set can cause. Especially new Python users will find it confusing that the order of the items in an iteration can change from one run to the next.
Do they find "for k, v in dict.items()" confusing now? Would be the same.
... What we really want is iterators for dictionaries, so why not implement these instead of tweaking for-loops.
Seems an unrelated topic: would "iterators for dictionaries" solve the supposed problem with iteration order?
If you are looking for speedups w/r to for-loops, applying a different indexing technique in for-loops would go a lot further and provide better performance not only to dictionary loops, but also to other sequences.
I have made some good experience with a special counter object (sort of like a mutable integer) which is used instead of the iteration index integer in the current implementation.
Please quantify, if possible. My belief (based on past experiments) is that in loops fancier than for i in range(n): pass the loop overhead quickly falls into the noise even now.
Using an iterator object instead of the integer + __getitem__ call machinery would allow more flexibility for all kinds of sequences or containers. ...
This is yet another abrupt change of topic, yes <0.9 wink>? I agree a new iteration *protocol* could have major attractions.