I suspect that you used highly optimized algorithms written for python, like the vector algorithms in numpy?
You will struggle to write better code, at least I would.
Python 1.4 would be mid-late 90s long before numpy and vector algorithms would have been available.
I suspect it’s more likely to be something like passing std::string by value not realising that would copy the string every time, especially with the statement that the mistake would be hard to express in Python.
