What threw me off was that you DID respond "This is never actually called ... I don't care much about performance" as if that addressed my main issue. So, if you really got my original point, you were essentially arguing "Code only needs to be readable and well structured to the extent that it's on the fast path. Otherwise, however the code falls out of my head is fine, so long as it works, and the effort to improve it to normal standards of readability is overkill.". I thought it was more charitable to believe you just hadn't read the whole comment.