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Seriously, so cool. I love watching my fellow nerds debate data types online.

On a side note, is there a Bitter Lesson for datatypes, the way there is for algorithms?

Probably some variation of "hardware usually influences what the optimal datatype is way more than any theoretical runtime differences". For example, B-trees for databases needing to be adapted to the block size of the underlying hardware device. Another example: As soon as you introduce any form pointer chasing to your datatype, you are often going to struggle against relatively simple array-based options because L1 cache is crazy fast compared to RAM.

Wow, great point! Thanks for the reply; I did not even think of hardware at the time of posting.

I will look into form pointer chasing. Any good reads that you would recommend for software devs who are interested in electrical engineering or rather understanding how to build hardware?

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