The Misunderstood Hashable Types and Why Dictionaries Are Called Dictionaries • [Club]

What does hashable really mean? And what’s the real superpower in dictionaries?

Pick up a dictionary. No, not that one. The real dictionary you have on your bookshelf, the one that has pages made of paper, which you use to look up the meaning of English words. Or whatever other language. But let’s assume it’s an English dictionary. Now, look up zymology.

I’ll wait…

Done? It probably didn’t take you too long to find zymology. Probably it took you longer to find the dictionary on your bookshelf, the one you haven’t used in years!

You know z is the last letter of the alphabet, so you opened the dictionary on a page towards the end of the book. Then you looked at a random word on the page or maybe the word listed in the header. Does it start with z? Yes? Look at the word’s second letter. No? Open the book to another page further in the dictionary.

You get the idea. I know you know how to find a word in a dictionary.

But now, imagine that you didn’t know the alphabet. Bear with me. Just assume you can recognise letters, so you can read words, but you don’t know the order of the letters in the alphabet. You don’t know that A comes first and D is the fourth one, and so on.

How would you find zymology now? And how long do you reckon it will take you to find the word?

There you go, now you understand the purpose of using hash values for hashable objects. Or you can read on…

Today, I also explore the topic in a short video where I can communicate differently. But if you prefer to just read, then go ahead and skip the video.

Let’s continue exploring dictionaries and hashable objects.