Definitely true. “Smallness” and/or “verbosity” make not-the-slightest bit of difference to the Perl compiler, which is going to translate the whole thing into a p-code tree anyhow, and “efficiency” is pretty much subject to exactly the same argument-of-irrelevance. (At a billion ops-per-second, no one can hear you scream.)

A good rule of thumb that I have adopted over the years, borne from the reality that for me it was true, is ... “would you spend your money to change this? If so, how will you convince your ever-skeptical board of directors (good folks... great at asking the hard questions) that you are actually right?”

If the answer is “no, there really isn't a short-term Return On Investment (ROI) in this,” ... don't do it! Spend the money on a really good beer, instead.