[Tutor] Is there a better way to write my code?

[Neil Cerutti]

On 2018-08-14, Alan Gauld via Tutor <tutor at python.org> wrote:
> - Use a list for objects(*) where you might need to
>   change the value of one of the objects

A list is standard practice when you need an ordered collection
of objects of the same type, e.g., a bunch of numbers, a bunch of
chickens, etc.. It is most efficient when the list may grow and
shrink on the end, but becomes suspicious if it usually grows and
shrinks in the middle or at the beginning. Nevertheless, Python
lists are very often used even so, and only require moving to a
different container type when the builtin list start to bog down.

> - Use a tuple for objects where you don't need
>   to change the values (it remains the same during
>   the life of the program).

Yes, a tuple makes an excellent fixed list.

A tuple is typically used to store a fixed-size collection of
objects of different types, when those objects have some logical
connection to one another.

If you had only these two containers to choose from for your
original exercise--a collection of colors and word-lengths--it
might make sense to store the color and wordlength as a tuple,
and to store those tuples in a list, on the assumption that more
colors might be added.

Aside: In Python there's usually no point in storing the length
of a string anywhere, since strings store their own length.

> - Use a set where you want to eliminate duplicates

Sets are great when the most common operations are adding new
items and testing for membership, or when you can take advantage
of set operations, like union or symmetric difference.

If your list of chickens is unordered and has no duplicates,
using a set instead is often a good refinement.

-- 
Neil Cerutti