> There was a time when a software engineer didn't get basic stuff. A time when languages like C were developed where there wasn't an associative data structure baked in for example. It wasn't because associative data structures are a secret tech that requires great insight to uncover. It is because the field was new and people hadn't cottoned on to how basic and important having access to hash-maps is. Times moved on. Now basically all modern languages have hash-maps as a basic data type.
That is a really weird historical fantasy. If you pull out your copy of volume 3 of Knuth and look at chapter 6, it is obvious that associative data structures were some of the first ones to be developed in the field.
The reason why hash tables became so popular is the explosion in main memory size starting in the late 1990s. The trade-offs between the possible associative data structures became less important for a lot of applications, especially when you consider how much needed to be done on secondary storage and specifically on tapes in the 1960s through the 1980s.
That is a really weird historical fantasy. If you pull out your copy of volume 3 of Knuth and look at chapter 6, it is obvious that associative data structures were some of the first ones to be developed in the field.
The reason why hash tables became so popular is the explosion in main memory size starting in the late 1990s. The trade-offs between the possible associative data structures became less important for a lot of applications, especially when you consider how much needed to be done on secondary storage and specifically on tapes in the 1960s through the 1980s.