I need elegance and performance: how to decide by the “best implementation” for each DOM algorithm that I face. This simple “DOMNodeList grouper” illustrate many little dilemmas:

• use iterator_to_array or “populate an array”, when not all items need to be copied.
• use clone operator, cloneNode method or import method?
• use parentNode::method() or documentElement::method? (see here)
• first removeChild or first replaceChild, no avoids “side effects”?
• …

My position, today, is only “do an arbitrary choice and follow it in all implementations” (like a “Convention over configuration” principle)… But, there are another considerations? About performance, there are some article showing benchmarks?

PS: this is a generic DOM question, any language (PHP, Javascript, Python, etc.) have the problem.