Python's collections: A Buffet of Specialized Data Types Python’s collections module provides a rich set of specialized container data types carefully designed to approach specific programming problems in a Pythonic and efficient way. The module also provides wrapper classes that make it safer to create custom classes that behave similar to the built-in types dict, list, and str. Learning about the data types and classes in collections will allow you to grow your programming tool kit with a valuable set of reliable and efficient tools. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to: • Write readable and explicit code with namedtuple • Build efficient queues and stacks with deque • Count objects quickly with Counter • Handle missing dictionary keys with defaultdict • Guarantee the insertion order of keys with OrderedDict • Manage multiple dictionaries as a single unit with ChainMap To better understand the data types and classes in collections, you should know the basics of working with Python’s built-in data types, such as lists, tuples, and dictionaries. Additionally, the last part of the article requires some basic knowledge about object-oriented programming in Python.