[Python-Dev] deque alternative (was: Linked lists) (original) (raw)

Christian Tismer tismer at stackless.com
Sun Dec 25 13:56:31 CET 2005

Guido van Rossum wrote:

Python's philosophy about (built-in) data types, inherited from ABC, is to offer a few powerful clearly distinct choices rather than lots of alternatives with overlapping usages. This reduces the time it takes to choose a data type and reduces the risk of picking the wrong type. (You seem to be indicating that this is indeed what's happening to you in Lisp. :-)

Speaking about the new dequeue type, I have the impression that this reasoning applies there a bit, too? Dequeues of course have applications, and I saw them used, especially by newcomers to the language. So I like their functionality.

But actually, I'm not so convinced if we need to introduce a new datatype. How about an extension to normal lists that does a little tracking of use-cases and decides about changing its implementation upon the presence of inserts/deletes at the lower end of the list?

I'm btw. not sure if this raises an implicit/explicitiness issue. My question is if it is necessary to put the burden about explicitly choosing a specialized two-ended list on the programmer, or if it is simple enough to make lists just do the right thing, if lists are used in a dequeue-style manner. Or is this maybe too much magic happening?

merry christmas -- chris

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