you see code with tons of indirect function calls, 
    lots of wrapper functions (ie one function massages 
    some arguments a bit and then just calls another 
    function), and no, it's not inlined because it's of
    ten all about interfacing between different library
    levels (webkit, various font rendering libraries, low-
    level drivers for "in memory" vs "on screen" yadda
    yadda)

can anyone speak to these criticisms?

i often write code that starts as this:

    function ae(arr) {
      //do 
      //first 
      //something to arr
      //do
      // second
      //  something to arr
      //do
      // third
      //  something to arr
    return arr
    }

then refactor it as:

    function first(arr) {
      // do
      //  something 
      return arr }
    function sec(arr) {
      // do
      //  something 
      return arr }
    function third(arr) {
      // do
      //  something 
      return arr }

    function ae(arr) {
      arr=first(arr)
      arr=second(arr)
      arr=third(arr)
    return arr
    }

is this what torvalds is referring to?

i thought i had done 'extensive' research on the perf burden of function calls and found them to be negligible so i decided to refactor for the sake of readability

what's best practices in regard to indirect function calls, wrapper functions, and inlining?