It was only an EXAMPLE. It might be irrelevant to this particular issue, but look at the context of my comment: it isn't irrelevant to the subject of learning to code more efficiently.
No problem. When I read your post I was confused whether you were suggesting that he could have gotten a 30% speed up in overall time by making i/o more efficient. Now I understand you weren't.
But I would still suggest that, within the context of programming competitions, a certain kind of "programming efficiency" is close to irrelevant. A sloppily coded solution that nevertheless implements the proper algorithm can be many orders of magnitude faster than an efficiently coded implementation of a slow algorithm. Programming contests are more about having the insight to implement an algorithm having low big O, not so much about efficient coding practices. This isn't to say that efficient coding practices aren't important generally, just that there are much more important things to focus on in programming competitions.
It was only an EXAMPLE. It might be irrelevant to this particular issue, but look at the context of my comment: it isn't irrelevant to the subject of learning to code more efficiently.