If you're writing C++, there's a good reason (maybe...) as to why you are. And probably, that reason is performance. So often when reading about the language you'll find all sorts of "performance tips and tricks" or "do this instead because it's more efficient". Sometimes you get a good explanation as to why you should. But more often than not, you won't find any hard numbers to back up that claim. I recently found a peculiar one, the final keyword.

The Performance Impact of C++'s `final` Keyword

by Benjamin Summerton

From the article:

Multiple blog posts claim that it can improve performance(sorry for linking a Medium article). It almost seems like it's almost free, and for a very measly change. After reading you'll notice something interesting: no one posted any metrics. Zero. Nada. Zilch. It essentially is "just trust me bro." Claims of performance improvements aren't worth salt unless you have the numbers to back it up. You also need to be able to reproduce the results. I've been guilty of this in the past (see a PR for Godot I made).

Being a good little engineer with a high performance C++ pet project, I really wanted to validate this claim.