bird - 8:13 pm on Sep 11, 2006 (gmt 0)

In the vast majority of cases, programmer efficiency is much more important than code efficiency.

A sounds linke "premature optimization", unless you have done measurements to show that your tight code actually does run faster than the readable version.

B should be the norm.

If measurements have shown a specific part of B not to be efficient enough, then you can optimize that part (and only that part), which may give you a useful definition of C.