Improve the readability of `List<T>`.
This commit does the following.
- Expands on some of the things already mentioned in comments.
- Describes the uniqueness assumption, which is critical but wasn't
mentioned at all.
- Rewrites `empty()` into a clearer form, as provided by Daniel
Henry-Mantilla on Zulip.
- Reorders things slightly so that more important things
are higher up, and incidental things are lower down, which makes
reading the code easier.
r? ````@lcnr````
1de7815ebb