>In kernels, drivers, and embedded systems they are very common.
Out of all the programmers in the world, what percentage of them do you think work in the kernel/driver/embedded spaces?
Out of all the programmers in the world, what percentage of them do you think work in the kernel/driver/embedded spaces?
Second, linked lists are useful in a lot more places than that. Probably a better proxy would be low-level coders. You almost always want a linked list somewhere when you're dealing with memory addresses and pointers. Maybe not for the primary collections, but there are always secondary ones that need to maintain a collection with a different membership or ordering, and vectors of pointers don't have many clear advantages over intrusive linked lists for those secondary collections.
The % who have touched kernel bits, wrote a triangle engine scene renderer, wrote a compiler, touched server metal in production, have worked on ASICs, and can put together ML/AI building blocks shrinks way, way down to a handful of living humans.
This is about how many work in kernels/embedded systems/etc vs more common programming gigs. And that's less about how many are trained to do so, but rather how many are needed.