This is one of GDScript’s right spots for sure. But if this is the performance bottleneck (in a dynamic scripting language) you’re facing, then maybe that bit of code should just be a GDExtension, written in C++.
I would imagine for most games the performance impact from this won’t matter much.
The problem in this case is not the potential performance bottleneck, but the bad ergonomics for a dev, that leads to the complain. The rest is consequence.
And to me it looks like pure language/stdlib problem. Like for me, the proposed solution looks ugly both from syntax and what is going on behind curtains perspective.
I would rather not to code in a language that makes/tolerates decisions like that.
I would imagine for most games the performance impact from this won’t matter much.