It was never lost on me that the length is encoded, my very first comment mentions it's the same in Java: the number of bytes you pass in is encoded. My point

It was never lost on me that the length is encoded, my very first comment mentions it's the same in Java: the number of bytes you pass in is encoded. My point isn't that every language should force that syntax ('offset' for example, doesn't make sense in languages with pointer math for example) Rather the point is that when the language doesn't follow that convention, it should buffer by default. I guess it is a blind spot in the standard library then