That's what they're saying: if someone says anything more complicated is faster, they challenge them to benchmark it. Usually, it turns out whoever argues the "

That's what they're saying: if someone says anything more complicated is faster, they challenge them to benchmark it. Usually, it turns out whoever argues the "is faster" point doesn't bother to benchmark it and the simpler code-wise thing wins out. So yes - the benchmark goes to performance, simplicity is in lines-of-code, cyclomatic, "in the eye of the beholder" or whatever other metric you choose, but usually it's obvious.