I think there are two ways of looking at this. From the top down (strategic), and from the bottom up (tactical). Depending on your perspective, you will likel

I think there are two ways of looking at this. From the top down (strategic), and from the bottom up (tactical). Depending on your perspective, you will likely fixate on different things. If you're starting from the bottom, you'll probably be more interested in the coding choices made by the developer. If you're coming from the top, you'll probably look at the goals of the site and whether the code met them, and then consider other details like optimization and cleanliness to be secondary ('gravy'). When I was in biz-school in the 90s, we used to spend a lot of time talking about effectiveness (the end result does what it needs to do) and efficiency (the end result does what it needs to do and is optimized for -insert criteria here-). Ideally, you get to be both effective and efficient. If, however, you can only be one, it's better to be effective.