In C where using the simplest data structures is valuable, you’d likely do much better by upgrading your programming language to something that offers a better

In C where using the simplest data structures is valuable, you’d likely do much better by upgrading your programming language to something that offers a better data structure. If you’re using a higher level language where you can abstract details about your sequence data structure, I think there’s very little benefit to using the simplest data structure and you should instead have widely used libraries that offer a good immutable sequence type, e.g. RRB trees. One exception is ML style languages where singly linked lists get a big syntax advantage (Haskell only half counts because most of its lists are really just iterators). I think this was, in hindsight, a mistake for a widely used language. It’s also a source of pointless pain for learners (eg I don’t think there’s much benefit to people having to write lots of silly tail-recursive functions or learning that you have to build your list backwards and then reverse it). Another exception would be some lisps where lists are everywhere and the cons-cell nature of them makes it hard to change.