In the end, i think it's all about where you put stuff. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, and whereas code can be condensed and refactored, you still end up with code and i think the best decisions are the ones that make your code easier to maintain and easier to extend in the future. It's all about how quickly you want to solve the problem and how much the future matters to the project.

Well said, rarely on a project do you have more time then you need, and never should you be unconcerned about the future state of your code.