I'm sure CPUs will try their best to optimize these usage patterns. But I suspect vector / array based approaches will still always outcompete linked lists in a

I'm sure CPUs will try their best to optimize these usage patterns. But I suspect vector / array based approaches will still always outcompete linked lists in actual benchmarks. Thats always been my experience of them. Linked lists still show up in the kernel, in redis, in game engines and so on because you can't build fast intrusive collections using arrays. Making linked lists "as fast as we can make them" doesn't mean they're competitive with a vector.