Now when you have a string of unknown length, how do you reify it with that template? In practice languages then have to keep around an unknown type argument at runtime. This is incompatible with most languages where types aren't known at runtime.
Why overcomplicate things so much? He probably just meant to use std::string. Programs like this definitely don't need to care about the few dozen bytes added by std::string overhead.
std::string stores the length as part of the value, not as part of the type. (That’s probably what nicoburns meant, but it’s clear what caused the confusion).
