In a 2016 TED interview, Linus Torvalds discusses what constitutes good taste in coding, using two implementations of item removal from a singly linked list as an example. One implementation requires a special case for removing the first item, while the other does not; Torvalds prefers the latter. The author reflects that considering nodes as two-dimensional suggests one-level pointers for manipulation, while linked lists as three-dimensional structures call for two-level pointers for elegance. However, this is unverified speculation. The example applies to ordered lists with specific ordering and insertion, not to unordered lists.
More Elegant Linked List Operations
The Clue
In a 2016 TED interview (14:10), Linus Torvalds talks about what he considers good taste in coding. As an example, he presents two implementations of item removal in singly linked lists (reproduced below). To remove the first item from a list, one implementation requires a special case; the other does not. Linus obviously prefers the latter.
mkirchner/linked-list-good-taste: Linus Torvalds' linked list argument for good taste, explained (github.com)
The Takeaway
The insight we can gain might be this: treat a node as two-dimensional (because it contains linearly stored information), and a single-level pointer is the elegant way to operate on its members. Once nodes are linked into a list, the whole structure becomes three-dimensional, and a double pointer is the elegant way to operate on its members.
I made all of this up; I haven't verified it.
But the example he gives is for ordered linked lists, where there is a specified order and insertion. For unordered linked lists, none of this needs to be considered.