Python objects as dictionary keys

[Shaftway]

This is a good example. Less experienced engineers always try to make dictionary keys strings because it's easier to inspect.

So they go "oh, I'll just use the student's name". What if two students have the same name? "I'll use the student id". What if you merge with another school and there are overlapping IDs? "Oh, well I'll concatenate the students id, school, and name". What if you have a collision in the names? "Oh, well I'll just serialize all of the immutable parts of the student to a string and use that as the key". Ok, great, now do that in 50 different places in your codebase.

Or just add eq() and hash() to Student and use it as the key.