On Fri, Jul 10, 2020 at 02:50:17PM +1000, Chris Angelico wrote:
And immediately above that part, I said that I had made use of this, and had used it in Python by listifying the dict first. Okay, so I didn't actually dig up the code where I'd done this, but that's a use case. I have *actually done this*. In both languages.
I'm not calling you a liar, I'm just pointing out that saying "I have done this" is not a use-case. You must have had a reason for *why* you did it, beyond just "because I can!" (or in this case, "because I can't, so I used a list instead"). It's the *why* that's important. When we ask for use-cases, the implication is that contrived examples don't really count: - to win a bet - just out of curiosity, to see if it can be done (I've done this) - to write obfuscated code - to solve an exercise: "Exercise 7: choose a random key:value pair from a dict, and print the result." etc. So *on its own* the ability to choose a random key:value pair from a dict is not very compelling. If it were combined with a *why* then it could become a stronger example, presuming of course that this use-case would not be equally well served by listifying the key:value pairs first. As I said, perhaps I just lack imagination. -- Steven