The biggest problem with using a for-loop to do this is that you are wasting CPU power.
When using sleep, the CPU can, in a sense, take a break (hence the name "sleep") from executing your program. This means that the CPU will be able to run other programs that have meaningful work to do while your program waits.
But in the for-loop the CPU continuously have to do work to increase a variable. For what purpose? Nothing. But the CPU doesn't know that. It's told to increase the variable, so that's what it will do. Meanwhile, other programs aren't given as much time to do their work because your program is taking up time.
Please don't waste CPU power, use the sleep approach.
