And, since most languages short circuit on basic string comparisons, you'd have some form of `secure_compare` function that compares two strings in constant time, and that behaviour is contracted in the name of the function.

Nobody is rewriting `==` to compare strings in constant time, not because it breaks some kind of API contract, but because it would result in a massive waste of CPU time. The point is, though, that they could. But then they are deciding to sacrifice performance for this one problem.

Crypto is obviously a case of it own when it comes to optimisations and as much as I called out the parent for approaching the absurd, we can pull out many similar special cases of our own.