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Do linked lists have any practical uses at all. Many computer science books compare them to arrays and say the main advantage is that they are mutable. However, most languages provide mutable versions of arrays. So do linked lists have any actual uses in the real world, or are they just part of computer science theory?
Linked lists have many uses. For example, implementing data structures that appear to the end user to be mutable arrays.
If you are using a programming language that provides implementations of various collections, many of those collections will be implemented using linked lists. When programming in those languages, you won’t often be implementing a linked list yourself but it might be wise to understand them so you can understand what tradeoffs the libraries you use are making. In other words, the set “just part of computer science theory” contains elements that you just need to know if you are going to write programs that just work.