On Monday, 7 May 2012 at 06:05:47 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
I wonder if the tradition of exposing HashMap and TreeMap was a
disservice by C++ and Java? Map and Set are programmer level
concepts.
Where there are algorithmic issues that require knowing about
trees or
has tables then the programmer is not working at the map or set
level.
Some people say that abstracting away big-O complexity should be
a capital offense, and I agree (preferably in slightly less
drastic words, though). Additionally, a tree-based map is
naturally ordered, whereas a hash map is not – for me, that's
enough to warrant exposing what seems to be a »detail«, at
least in languages like C++ and D.
David
