> which kind of a software engineering no-no. Optimization along any axis (code size, simplicity, compile-time performance, runtime performance, memory size, e

> which kind of a software engineering no-no. Optimization along any axis (code size, simplicity, compile-time performance, runtime performance, memory size, etc.) always involves some level of violating software engineering norms. One way to think of software engineering is that it's the practice of optimizing long-term developer velocity. Any practice that optimizes other factors generally does so at the expense of that. That's OK. Meta-software engineering is about knowing when long-term maintainability is the right factor to optimize for. :)