What you are saying is true. In the real world where this code was snatched from with a little bit of salty refactoring I avoided this process entirely. Goes back to an old axiom "If you don't like the answer - rethink the question." That is off subject though.

I was very interested in where experienced, practical professionals would come down on the question of having to choose between "verbose maintainable and slow" vs "nicely black box but very slow" vs "efficient but not so obvious". I wanted to use some sample code that would demonstrate these notions. I fear I went afoul there. My apologies if I wasted anyones time.

There are soapboxes everywhere but given a sort of "Sophies Choice" of code I wondered which side serious professionals would come down on. As a person who manages, trains or mentors people on a regular basis I keep trying to understand development choices others make as a part of training my thinking. For various reasons that responsibility brought me to where I had a need to visit the "clarity vs Speed" issue.

Thank you to all of you who responded. Each and every response was very instructional.