http://thecplusplusblog.blogspot.com

Inline function can make you code faster if used, but then if its used a lot of places as inline function, the code bloats up. This can also lead to more page faults and hence leading to serious performance issues. Sometimes function optimizations can actually lead to a smaller code being generated because code for function calls(basically stack usage) is optimised.

Did I say page faults can increase, but then if there were two function on different pages, then thrashing could have been more without inline functions. Also its more likely that code would be at the boundary of cache, so cache memory thrashing is induced there.  But then again if the code is at right in the middle of the cache then fetching code of another function in another page would take toll on memory via thrashing.

So is inline good or bad. Now that something very subjective I would say. Just like not every garment looks beautiful to the customer, inlineing is also based on the usage. A simple direct answer may very well be wrong.

void foo()
{
  int a,b, c;
  c = bar(a,b);
}

inline int bar(int a, int b)
{
  //Just do something here
   return something;
}

So you have the function foo calling function bar, but as bar is inline code for it would be placed right where it was called in foo. So we see how inline function has simplified life in C++. Any question of yours in this regard would be appreciated and I would try my best to answer it.

As Leda designer Tim Budd holds it: The idea of a multiparadigm language is to provide a framework in which programmers can work in a variety of styles, freely intermixing constructs from different paradigms. := (wikipedia)

From what I understood is that C++ provides us means to make use of objects and design patterns as well as give us the ability to make use of Templates. That is to say that we make use of OOPS as well as generic programming paradigms makes C++ really powerful.