Probably some variation of "hardware usually influences what the optimal datatype is way more than any theoretical runtime differences". For example, B-trees for databases needing to be adapted to the block size of the underlying hardware device. Another example: As soon as you introduce any form pointer chasing to your datatype, you are often going to struggle against relatively simple array-based options because L1 cache is crazy fast compared to RAM.

Wow, great point! Thanks for the reply; I did not even think of hardware at the time of posting.

I will look into form pointer chasing. Any good reads that you would recommend for software devs who are interested in electrical engineering or rather understanding how to build hardware?