Why Strings as Classes?

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Jb" <jb at nowhere.com> wrote in message news:g90mm6$2tk9$1 at digitalmars.com...
>
> "Walter Bright" <newshound1 at digitalmars.com> wrote in message 
> news:g90iia$2jc4$3 at digitalmars.com...
>> Yigal Chripun wrote:
>>> a) people here said that a virtual call will make it slow. How much
>>> slow? how much of an overhead is it on modern hardware considering also
>>> that this is a place where hardware manufacturers spend time on
>>> optimizations?
>>
>> Virtual function calls have been a problem for hardware optimization. 
>> Direct function calls can be speculatively executed, but not virtual 
>> ones, because the hardware cannot predict where it will go. This means 
>> virtual calls can be much slower than direct function calls.
>
> Modern x86 branch prediction treats indirect calls the same as conditional 
> branches. They get a slot in the branch target buffer, so they do get 
> speculatively executed. And if correctly predicted it's only a couple of 
> cycles more costly direct calls.

Just curious: How "modern", do you mean by "modern" here?