Here's an example that made sense to me elegant (readable / compact) function isPalindrome(str) { return str == str.split('').reverse().join(''); } effic

Here's an example that made sense to me elegant (readable / compact) function isPalindrome(str) { return str == str.split('').reverse().join(''); } efficient (~50x faster than above) function isPalindrome(str) { var len = Math.floor(str.length / 2); for (var i = 0; i < len; i++) if (str[i] !== str[str.length - i - 1]) return false; return true; } I would probably say elegance and efficiency are not aligned rather than at odds IMO because they may overlap or may not, they don't have the same goals.