March 11, 2008
5:16 p.m.
Martin v. Löwis wrote:
I follow the advice Guido gave: I use the data structure that will make my code shortest and easiest to read,
But given a choice such as list vs. dict, the code is almost identical either way. What do you do then? Toss a coin? Or make a few educated guesses based on what you know about each data type?
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
This phrase seems to be widely misused. Making your code bloated and convoluted without good evidence of the necessity is premature optimisation. Picking an appropriate data structure for the task based on experience is good design practice. -- Greg