title: List vs Dictionary when referring by index/key
body: <p>So I have been mainly using lists to retrieve small amounts of data from a database which feeds into a web application but have recently come across dictionaries which produce more readable code with keys but what is the performance difference when just referring by index/key?</p>
  
  <p>I understand that a dictionary uses more memory but what is best practice in this scenario and is it worth the performance/maintenance trade-off bearing in mind that I will not be performing searches or sorting the data?</p>