The Wronskian lets us determine if a set of functions (possibly the solutions to a differential equation) are linearly dependent or not. But, for every example in the book, it is very obvious if one of the functions is a linear combination of the others. The examples in the book use 3-5 functions. What would be an example of a small number of functions where this isn't obvious?
Or is the application of the Wronskian mostly to deal with large sets of functions... where the sheer number makes it hard to tell if they are dependent or not?