This is partly because the C++ stdlib looks like they've given you all the basic tools you need - unlike the C standard library - yet in fact many of these tools are hopelessly obsolete. It's not quite PHP's "fractal of bad design", these are all reasonable tools... if it's 1985. The linked lists make sense on hardware where five pointer fetches and five consecutive memory reads cost roughly the same - 1985 hardware.

The growable array type std::vector<T> is least impacted by these archaic choices out of the tools in the box you're likely to reach for. So it will make sense very often to choose this type first.