Trivia rarely affect efficiency. Are all the machinations worth it, when their primary effect is to make the code less readable?

If you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?

Each new user of a new system uncovers a new class of bugs.

Trivia rarely affect efficiency. Are all the machinations worth it, when their primary effect is to make the code less readable?

Get the weirdnesses into the data where you can manipulate them easily, and the regularity into the code because regular code is a lot easier to work with

Some compilers allow a check during execution that subscripts do not exceed array dimensions. This is a help, but not sufficient. First, many programmers do not use such compilers because They're not efficient. (Presumably, this means that it is vital to get the wrong answers quickly.)

... it is a fundamental principle of testing that you must know in advance the answer each test case is supposed to produce. If you don't, you are not testing; you are experimenting.