Why Python Runs Slow, Part 1: Data Structures
The pythonic way of creating a Point like data structure is not<p><pre><code>  point = {'x': 0, 'y': 0}
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but instead, this<p><pre><code>  Point = namedtuple('Point', ['x', 'y'], verbose=True)
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The resulting class, I believe to be more performant than using a dictionary - but I haven't actually measured this.