At this point you may have a question: “If this technique is so important, and if it makes the ‘right’ function call all the time, why is it an option? Why do I even need to know about it?”

This is a good question, and the answer is part of the fundamental philosophy of C++: “Because it’s not quite as efficient.” You can see from the previous assembly-language output that instead of one simple CALL to an absolute address, there are two – more sophisticated – assembly instructions required to set up the virtual function call. This requires both code space and execution time.

Some object-oriented languages have taken the approach that late binding is so intrinsic to object-oriented programming that it should always take place, that it should not be an option, and the user shouldn’t have to know about it. This is a design decision when creating a language, and that particular path is appropriate for many languages.[56] However, C++ comes from the C heritage, where efficiency is critical. After all, C was created to replace assembly language for the implementation of an operating system (thereby rendering that operating system – Unix – far more portable than its predecessors). One of the main reasons for the invention of C++ was to make C programmers more efficient.[57] And the first question asked when C programmers encounter C++ is, “What kind of size and speed impact will I get?” If the answer were, “Everything’s great except for function calls when you’ll always have a little extra overhead,” many people would stick with C rather than make the change to C++. In addition, inline functions would not be possible, because virtual functions must have an address to put into the VTABLE. So the virtual function is an option, and the language defaults to nonvirtual, which is the fastest configuration. Stroustrup stated that his guideline was, “If you don’t use it, you don’t pay for it.”

Thus, the virtual keyword is provided for efficiency tuning. When designing your classes, however, you shouldn’t be worrying about efficiency tuning. If you’re going to use polymorphism, use virtual functions everywhere. You only need to look for functions that can be made non-virtual when searching for ways to speed up your code (and there are usually much bigger gains to be had in other areas – a good profiler will do a better job of finding bottlenecks than you will by making guesses).

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the size and speed impacts of going to C++ are within 10 percent of the size and speed of C, and often much closer to the same. The reason you might get better size and speed efficiency is because you may design a C++ program in a smaller, faster way than you would using C.