Python — Lists VS Dicts VS Sets VS Tuples

Today we’re going back to basics.

I recently went back to school, and have to take a compulsory Python programming module. Which has been reinforcing my absolute basics once again (it’s been 7 years)

And one topic that has been confusing my classmates who are new to programming is: when to use lists VS dicts VS sets VS tuples

Lists

Ordered, Mutable Sequence

mylist = ['apple', 'orange', 'pear']

When to use lists:

• when we want to keep track of the ORDER of elements.
• when we need to sometimes add/delete stuff to/from our list

Dicts

Collection of key value pairs

mydict = {"apple":4, "orange":5}

When to use dicts:

• when we don’t care about ORDER of elements
• when we want to access a value using a key time-efficiently

Tuples

Lists but immutable. Ordered, Immutable Sequence

And we use () instead of []

Immutable means we cannot change it after we create it

mytuple = ("apple", "orange", "pear")