There is definitely a trade-off between brevity and efficiency/practicality. A classic example is "The Fastest and Shortest Algorithm for All Well-Defined Probl

There is definitely a trade-off between brevity and efficiency/practicality. A classic example is "The Fastest and Shortest Algorithm for All Well-Defined Problems": > An algorithm M is described that solves any well-defined problem p as quickly as the fastest algorithm computing a solution to p, save for a factor of 5 and low-order additive terms Spoiler alert, the "algorithm M" is a brute-force search; the "low-order additive terms" in its time complexity come from brute-force searching for provably faster programs; if one is found, we restart with that. All the time spent searching for proofs is independent of the input size (e.g. it depends on "sorting", but not which particular list we've been given); hence it's technically just a constant 'warmup time'! http://hutter1.net/ai/pfastprg.htm http://hutter1.net/ai/pfastprg.htm