I'm currently doing the daily problem on leetcode and I can't understand why my hashmaps are not getting sorted, for "successes" I got as sorted hashmaps: {u'u': 1, u'e': 2} and {u's': 4, u'c': 2}. My code is the following: class Solution(object): def maxFreqSum(self, s): """ :type s: str :rtype: int """ vowel_count = 0 consonant_count = 0 vowels = set("AEIOUaeiou") vowel_dict = {} consonant_dict = {} for i in s: if i in vowels: vowel_dict = vowel_dict.get(i, 0) + 1 else: consonant_dict = consonant_dict.get(i, 0) + 1 vowel_dict = {k: v for k, v in sorted(vowel_dict.items(), key=lambda item: item[1], reverse=True)} consonant_dict = {k: v for k, v in sorted(consonant_dict.items(), key=lambda item: item[1], reverse=True)} print(vowel_dict) print(consonant_dict) if vowel_dict: vowel_count = next(iter(vowel_dict.values())) if consonant_dict: consonant_count = next(iter(consonant_dict.values())) return vowel_count + consonant_count I don't understand why one hashmap is sorted and the other one no. Continue reading...