Choose direct, efficient methods over approaches that require additional parsing, conversion, or processing steps. This reduces computational overhead and improves performance by eliminating intermediate operations.

When equivalent alternatives exist, prefer:

Example from code reviews:

// Avoid: String parsing with conversion overhead
val color = if (isDarkMode) "#0b0600" else "#f3f8ff"

// Prefer: Direct constructor
val color = if (isDarkMode) Color.rgb(11, 6, 0) else Color.rgb(243, 248, 255)

This principle applies to any situation where you can eliminate intermediate processing steps, type conversions, or unnecessary method calls that don’t add functional value but consume computational resources.