The audacity to do such a thing…
this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
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I distinctly remember asking this question during a 100 level programming class but I just can not remember why I'd ever want to do this?
What problem could I have possibly have been trying to solve where this would seem like the answer.
A common problem (before learning it is impossible/fraught with danger) is categorisation, like sorting of strings.
Say you have a text, and need to count words of different lengths.
One intuitive approach is to pass through it once and add each word to a list for the corresponding length, as well as making lists as needed. No 7 letter words, no 7-letter-word-list, even though there are longer words.
As humans we're good at sorting things into an unknown number of categories, and we have to unlearn that for programming
This makes a ton of sense and I think you probably solved this mystery for me.
"Oh I need to iterate over something, and keep track of new information as I do it, therefore I should be able to create 'dynamic variables' as I progress."
Yep, what you failed to realise at the time is you've just invented a dynamic data structure like a list or a dictionary.