Linked lists are one of those data structures everyone learns, everyone dreads — and they fold a good number of candidates in interviews. They're rarely used directly in application code. Instead, they show up as building blocks for higher-level data structures like stacks, queues, and deques. This post breaks down what linked lists are, how they work under the hood, and why pointer manipulation is the key skill they test.
What is a linked list?
A linked list is a data structure that represents a sequence of nodes.