[nezirus]

... on the third hand it's better not to roll your own list in any language ;-)

Joking aside, some stuff are currently really hard in Rust, but the rate of change slowed down, and all I can see now is everyday ergonomic improvements, so there is hope for (slightly) simpler syntax in the future.

[pclmulqdq]

Doubly linked lists break one of the fundamental promises you make to the borrow checker: single ownership. I doubt they're going to get much easier.

[cmrdporcupine]

It's also just generally not a wise structure to be making or using in applications level development at this point. Vectors will outperform them most of the time, are more cache friendly, and easier to write these days. And Rust has already done the work of building collections you can already use, including some that can be used no-std in embedded/baremetal environments.

And if you really need a linked-list type structure, and are competent to make it and use it properly/safely, unsafe {} is waiting for you.

[pclmulqdq]

You tend to see linked lists in places like operating systems, storage systems, and stackless asynchronous server systems. These kinds of linked lists actually do perform better than vectors in most cases.

Specifically, linked lists do well when objects are: 1. Large, specifically 100s of bytes 2. Moved frequently between collections 3. Intrusively linked (meaning that the pointers are part of the struct, not a separate library) and 4. Never randomly accessed

One size does not fit all when it comes to performance of list structures, unfortunately. In particular, large items tend to break standard library structures, since they are not the usual case.

[cmrdporcupine]

Yes, hence why I said "applications level" development specifically. 99% of developers will never need to go this path. Those that do, they're already working down in unsafe land usually in embedded systems and OS development, and they need to think carefully about what they're doing.

I'm personally not entirely sold on Rust's memory safety model, though I did learn to work with it when I was getting paid to work in it.