Which is better coding style?

Is better to code
1. In a way can be readable easily on first sight but maybe inefficient
or
2. That is very efficient and short but more complicated to read and understand

My instructor (a very scary prof) always tells us to go to option #1. Yes you can still do option #2 if you provider enough comments to explain.

But if you do option #1, you will not need to comment alot about your code because your code will speak for itself because of its easy readability.

What do you think?

because your super-duper-hyper-engineered code might not have been needed anyway.

Signed, signed, and signed again.

Besides, I find it totally hilarious how often new programmers go hog wild with data structures with low time complexity. Newsflash guys: quite often the simple yet slow algorithm is a lot faster if you're only dealing with a few elements.

It's like using a rocket launcher to kill a squirrel: total overkill, and really heavy too.