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YOHash Table is a data structure designed to be fast to work with.
The reason Hash Tables are sometimes preferred instead of arrays or linked lists is because searching for, adding, and deleting data can be done really quickly, even for large amounts of data.
In a Linked List, finding a person "Bob" takes time because we would have to go from one node to the next, checking each node, until the node with "Bob" is found.
And finding "Bob" in an Array could be fast if we knew the index, but when we only know the name "Bob", we need to compare each element (like with Linked Lists), and that takes time.
With a Hash Table however, finding "Bob" is done really fast because there is a way to go directly to where "Bob" is stored, using something called a hash function.
To get the idea of what a Hash Table is, let's try to build one from scratch, to store unique first names inside it.
We will build the Hash Set in 5 steps:
Starting with an array.
Storing names using a hash function.
Looking up an element using a hash function.
Handling collisions.
The basic Hash Set code example and simulation.
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