Hash tables v self-balancing search trees

Question

I am curious to know what is the reasoning that could overweighs towards using a self-balancing tree technique to store items than using a hash table.

I see that hash

Answer 1

In my humble opinion, self-balancing trees work pretty well as Academic topics. And I do not know anything that can be qualified as a "straight-forward implementation of a red-black tree".

In the real world, the memory wall makes them far less efficient than they are on paper.

With this in mind, hash tables are decent alternatives, especially if you don't practice them the Academic style (forget about the table size constraint and you magically resolve the table resize issue and almost all collision issues).

In a word: keep it simple. If that's simple for you then that's simple for your computer.