The problem with comments like these is that guessing what "better language" a commentator has in mind is always an exercise left up to the reader. And that tends to be by design—it's great for potshots and punditry, because it means not having make a concrete commitment to anything that might similarly be confronted and torn apart in the replies—like if the "better language" alluded to is C (and it generally is)—the language where the standard library "steers" you towards quadratic string operations because the default/natural way to refer to a string's length is O(n).