I think this long post is saying that if you are afraid that moving code behind a function call will slow it down, you can look at the machine code and run a benchmark to convince yourself that it is fine?
Agreed. Nitpicking about indirection is definitely a "premature micro-optimization is the root of all evil" moment.
When I worked on Firefox, we eventually had to remove a bunch of indirection (the interested can actually search bugzilla.mozilla.org for deCOMtamination for some instances of this), but that project wasn't a thing until there was clear evidence that there were problems with virtual function calls on hot paths.
This long post is demonstrating that Knuth’s advice, “premature optimization is the root of all evil,” is still one of the first heuristics you should apply.
The article describes a couple of straw men and even claims that they’re right in principle:
> Then someone on the team raises an eyebrow. “Isn’t that an extra function call? Indirection has a cost.” Another member quickly nods.
> They’re not wrong in principle.
But they are wrong in principle. There’s no excuse for this sort of misinformation. Anyone perpetuating it, including the blog author, clearly has no computer science education and shouldn’t be listened to, and should probably be sent to a reeducation camp somewhere to learn the basics of their profession.
Perhaps they don’t understand what a compiler does, I don’t know, but whatever it is, they need to be broken down and rebuilt from the ground up.