Hacker News Reader

Of course, it depends on the language. If you're using a language with linked lists, appending is the wrong way to do it. :)

On a different note: it's nice to see this here, it validates my choice to .reverse() and .push() when using an array as a queue today.

View on HN

Linked lists are only useful in very few situations and this is not one of them.

I've been terrified of linked structures since I saw a video (I think it was here) from a C++ conference talking about how horrible their performance is.

You could keep pointers to both the head and tail in the list object though. Then adding and removing stuff would be O(1) for both ends.

Yep, and that used to be idiomatic, years and years ago when people still wrote their own linked lists. I'd be surprised if it isn't still the standard behavior for that data structure.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com