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?

Thats why i hate HTML. I can't freaking code it nicely to be readable in code form (tabs etc). Ends up i have to reaarrange it so it looks rite on the browser but makes my eyes go blind each time i read the actual code.

And dun tell me to go use a WYSIWYG editor (dreamweaver), some HTML files like themes files etc etc but be edited in code since they dun render at all on a WYSISWYG editor.