Linked lists in their basic form are essentially obsolete. Having small items linked by pointers on a modern computer means following the pointer, allocation and deallocation are all more expensive than using data.

This sounds like a backwards rationalization without a technical explanation. Why would a linked list be any better for 'exploratory' programming? The vast majority of data structures are arrays, hash maps and occasionally a sorted map for the times where you need to insert something in a specific place.

What scenario is a linked list valuable in 'exploratory' programming where it wouldn't make more sense to use a different basic data structure?