Balanced trees

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Mon, 10 Mar 2014 19:24:07 -0400, Roy Smith wrote:

> In article <8761nmrnfk.fsf at elektro.pacujo.net>,
>  Marko Rauhamaa <marko at pacujo.net> wrote:
> 
>> Anyway, this whole debate is rather unnecessary since every developer
>> is supposed to have both weapons in their arsenal.
> 
> The problem with having a choice is that it opens up the possibility of
> making the wrong one :-)
> 
> As this discussion has shown, figuring out whether a hash table or a
> tree is better for a given problem is non-trivial.  My guess is that if
> you gave 1000 typical developers both data structures and let them pick
> freely, the number of cases where it really mattered and the developer
> picked the right one would be approximately equal to the number of cases
> where they picked the wrong one.

You're very optimistic.

In my experience, the average developer has an amazing talent for 
pessimising code when they think they are optimising it.




-- 
Steven D'Aprano
http://import-that.dreamwidth.org/