[thayne]

Or hash table, or any other kind of tree.

My guess would be because it was implemented in c, where the usual practice if you need a container type other than a fixed size array is to implement it yourself. IME, c code tends to use linked lists for a lot of things that in most other languages would be implemented using a better suited, and more performent, container type from the standard library.

One way that other languages can outperform c, is it is easier to use the right data structure.

[masklinn]

Blender's not even in C (the snippets are clearly C++), I wonder what the logic of having a sorted doubly linked list is: unless it's a skip list it's not like you can do bisection searches.

I guess a flat array could still be debatable if you're usually inserting near but not at the end, as it'll still need to move all the following elements. But it seems dubious.