Optimization, CSV files and how to know which functions are easier for the computer?

Hey guys !
I’m currently trying to learn processing with the amazing videos by the Coding Train on Youtube. So I’m pretty new to programming and I started using CVS files to keep a good bunch of data I could otherwise put directly in processing. I thought it would lighten my program a lot and let me easily store whatever I want, but I’m wondering if using getRow and getInt, getFloat, etc. is good ? Does it take longer to find the data if it’s in the CSV file or once it’s loaded it’s just like any other array ?

Also how do you guys find out which functions are faster ? I try to read on the processing website and in the java documentations (of course, knowing how noob I am, I’m not yet ready to decipher the java stuff LOL), but I didn’t find anything about that.

You can always create a class containing all the columns of your Table as fields and transfer them to it.