How do I explain what is data structure to someone who has never programmed before?
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A data structure is a structure thats holds data (numbers, letters) in an efficient way for the task you want to do. There are commonly known data structures and patterns used which have been discovered to be very efficient and fast for certain tasks. But there is also mostly a tradeoff involved; e.g finding a specific number in a list. Depending on how long this list can be, if you only need to find but never change (adding or removing) or how you can access the information, you decide which tradeoffs you can accept and thus, which data structure will help solve your problem best. These tradeoffs are typically described as BigO notation
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