Noob question.
There are four times the loops, but the amount of character comparison stays the same. Is just looping through the string really this much less efficient than the comparison you make with each character, that it alone quadriples the workload?

If you mock beginners for bad practice, it'd be nice to explain what's wrong about it.

And here I am thinking that good algorithm is the most optimised one and based on math as much as possible. Stupid me.

I tried to find and figure out the formula too. I spent like an hour trying to do actual math but sadly I failed. On the other hand I found another solution. Not the most elegant one but it's fairly simple.

I'm sorry