Let me get one thing clear: Software performance is important, but it’s also completely overrated.
Why is it that in nearly every code inspection, the first comment I hear is related to performance? Is performance somehow the most important software metric? Are educational institutions forcing programmers to believe that fast procedural code is all that matters? Hell, it might be time to throw out Java for good old assembly! I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard something like, “If I loop through this collection twice, it will be slower.” So what!
Sure, your code may be faster, but will it be more clear? More testable? More understandable? Give me clean slow code any day of the week. In the end, your fast code doesn’t matter to me unless you can prove that it’s faster.
Early optimization is the root of much evil.