Earlier quoted context omitted.
OOP in C++ leads to twice as much pointer dereferencing. Just that you don't see it doesn't mean it does not exist. Look at the generated code. It sucks. The best thing in C++ is compile-time computation (ignoring the horrible template syntax). OO is not esp. well implemented.
Inlining the ctable into the object would only be faster if - you have very few objects - you have very few virtual functions If you have a lot of objects or a lot of virtual functions, things will be less likely to fit in cache which will entirely destroy your performance, by an order of magnitude when compared to a mostly-always-branch-predicted indirection. I remember experimenting with a an "inlined" version of s…
In my jitted ruby-like VM my methods are also copied, not referenced. Javascript also prefers copying the methods. This is usually called prototype-based OO. True prototypes copy the struct fields also, without creating classes, but copying the read-only methods only is a worthwhile OO optimization, C++ cannot do.