ThinkPy currently lacks support for dictionaries and indexing operations, limiting its ability to teach common data structure patterns. Adding these features would enhance the language's educational value and bring it closer to Python's functionality.
Benefits
Educational Value
Students can learn key-value data structures earlier in their journey
Natural progression from lists to more complex data structures
Closer alignment with Python's core data types
Problem-Solving Capabilities
Enables teaching of hash table concepts
Supports more realistic data manipulation scenarios
Allows for nested data structure manipulation
Code Organization
Better representation of structured data
More intuitive way to handle configuration and settings
Support for natural key-based lookups
Technical Details
Add dictionary literal syntax: {"key": value}
Support indexing for both lists and dictionaries: container[key]
Description
ThinkPy currently lacks support for dictionaries and indexing operations, limiting its ability to teach common data structure patterns. Adding these features would enhance the language's educational value and bring it closer to Python's functionality.
Benefits
Educational Value
Problem-Solving Capabilities
Code Organization
Technical Details
{"key": value}container[key]data["users"][0]["name"])Acceptance Criteria