eggbug enjoyerall i'll say about the Balatro string comparisons thing is that nobody really intuitively understands performance, least of all programmers. you have to actually analyze it properly, or you're just shooting at ghosts.
any speculation about a program's performance that doesn't begin with (A) noting what's specifically slow when the program is running and (B) profiling those actions/operations is fundamentally unserious, imo.
related tangent: abstraction and concreteness are tools that ultimately serve the same end in writing programs: clarity. which one is appropriate will vary with context and also the author's preferences, but unless data proves that a particular algorithm or representation simply will not work at a physical level, then factors like ergonomics, simplicity, and intuitiveness will matter a lot more to the longevity of a project than always using the theoretically most optimal structure or algorithm for each task.
