On Mon, 07 May 2012 08:52:56 -0400, David Nadlinger <[email protected]>
wrote:
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.
Yes, I fully agree.
That being said, I think it's also important that some
functions/structures should not have to care what algorithm is used.
That's one of the reasons I like having the interface design that
dcollections uses.
-Steve
