> A dictionary will generally beat storing values as key/value in a list, de-duplicating and linearly searching on the key. If you don't believe that
I don't believe that, although "generally" is doing heavy lifting here. It depends on the key, value, number of kv, how good the hash algo is, etc. Yeah, standard impls are pretty good nowadays. If you don't want to bother understanding the problem space fully (which like you said is fine, otherwise we'd get nowhere), use a standard tool to solve the problem.
So yes, by all means use a hash map if it makes it easier to read/reason about. Hash maps after all are a common tool for this. Just don't start with the big-O crap.
I don't believe that, although "generally" is doing heavy lifting here. It depends on the key, value, number of kv, how good the hash algo is, etc. Yeah, standard impls are pretty good nowadays. If you don't want to bother understanding the problem space fully (which like you said is fine, otherwise we'd get nowhere), use a standard tool to solve the problem.
So yes, by all means use a hash map if it makes it easier to read/reason about. Hash maps after all are a common tool for this. Just don't start with the big-O crap.