[Tutor] Dictionaries or Numpy?

[Adam Clarridge]

On 5/16/08, John Fouhy <john at fouhy.net> wrote:
>
> On 17/05/2008, Adam Clarridge <adam.clarridge at gmail.com> wrote:
> >  I'm fairly new to Python, and I am not sure whether it would be faster
> >  for me to use a Dictionary data type to represent the board
> >  (advantages: indices can be strings or tuples, and the dictionary can
> >  store different types of data as well, so programming would be easier)
> >  or the Numpy array type (don't know much about this, but I have heard
> >  Numpy is faster).
>
>
> Hi Adam,
>
> I believe a general rule of programming is: don't optimize until you
> know you need to.  I would advise using dictionaries for simplicity.
> If the program turns out slower than you would like, you can use
> profiling tools to figure out where in the code it is spending most of
> its time.  If this turns out to involve dictionary lookups, you could
> then look at changing to Numpy (hint: you could use the timeit module
> to benchmark dictionary access against Numpy arrays).  If your program
> design is good, the change should be too hard.
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimization_(computer_science)#When_to_optimize
>
> --
>
> John.



Thanks for the insight - I guess I was sort of overlooking that general
principle, good to be reminded. The timeit module seems like exactly what I
would want later on, too. Thanks again!

Adam
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