Balanced trees

[Alister]

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.

Perhaps you are not familiar with the 50/50/90 rule?

Given any 50/50 choice you are 90% certain to pick the wrong one :-)



-- 
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing...
		-- Thomas Jefferson