Algorithm Movecount vs Speed

[N's-cvt]

Fun question: Usually the lower the movecount of an alg the better, however there are still algs that have 20+ moves that I think are alright like the N perm that goes R U R' U Jb Perm U2 R U' R'. So what are your thoughts, should we consider using algs that are longer than usual because they could be faster than a shorter alg?

 

[xyzzy]

The only thing you should really care about is how long it takes to execute the alg. Efficiency (move count) and ergonomics (regrips, overworking, etc.) are proxies for that, because it's hard to just look at a bunch of letters and immediately figure out whether it's a good alg or not.

For the most part, efficiency and ergonomics correlate really well with execution time (shorter algs are usually better, 2-gen/3-gen are usually better than 6-gen), but there are exceptions.