Agreed. "Tranparency or performance, pick one" only bothers me occasionally since I don't usually care about performace much anymore. When it does bother me, it bites hard. Back when I was using C a lot I found I would try to think ahead about potential problems like this. Now that I use Perl, I find I get lulled by the "good laziness" it fosters and start incorporating some of my own "bad laziness" (i.e. not thinking at all)...