Raymond Hettinger has a great talk about how much python's dict has improved over the years. So this is super interesting and will probably just make the builtin dict better eventually.
The lesson of the talk is that if you are idiomatic then you will benefit as the language improves.
Very cool presentation. I loved how he says that they improved dict so much that they basically rediscovered database tables with indices.
Dave Beazley has a great talk about using Python built ins.
Def worth a watch as he is funny but also super cool to see someone use a REPL this way:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyDLAutA88s