Coding for Performance : Virtual Methods and Sealed Classes

Do not mark methods virtual by default, “just in case.” However, if virtual methods are necessary for a coherent design in your program, you probably should not go too far out of your way to remove them.

Making methods virtual prevents certain optimizations by the JIT compiler, notably the ability to inline them. Methods can only be inlined if the compiler knows 100% which method is going to be called. Marking a method as virtual removes this certainty, though there are other factors, covered in Chapter 3, that are perhaps more likely to invalidate this optimization.

Closely related to virtual methods is the notion of sealing a class, like this:

public sealed class MyClass {}

A class marked as sealed is declaring that no other classes can derive from it. In theory, the JIT could use this information to inline more aggressively, but it does not do so currently. Regardless, you should mark classes as sealed by default and not make methods virtual unless they need to be. This way, your code will be able to take advantage of any current as well as theoretical future improvements in the JIT compiler.

If you are writing a class library that is meant to be used in a wide variety of situations, especially outside of our organization, you need to be more careful. In that case, having virtual APIs may be more important than raw performance to ensure your library is sufficiently reusable and customizable. But for code that you change often and is used only internally, go the route of better performance.

Source : Ben M Watson : Performance Considerations of Class Design and Gen

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