First, you haven't demonstrated at all that the "elegant" solution is slower. Between `remove_cs101` and `remove_elegant`, it looks like they are equivalent (in particular, the inner loop has the same number of instructions) except the former uses more instructions.

Second, I think you're missing the point by focusing on the code generated by the compiler. Clearly the two algorithms are equivalent, and a good compiler can generate equivalent code for them, up to an instruction more or less. The bigger concern here is about the source code: how can we express the algorithm in the most elegant (think: clear, concise, and correct) way? The exact generated bytecode is irrelevant, so long as the compiler is able to generate something reasonable, which is clearly the case here, as you've demonstrated.