To me, this points to a deficiency in the rustc compiler. All trivial methods (trivial in that they will always be cheaper than a function call) should be automatically treated by the compiler as if they had been marked #[inline]. Currently a rust programmer has to annotate every single trivial getter and setter with that attribute, which is both tiresome and easy to forget.
Eventually, we might compile everything at once, making the whole "crate" separation a tad bit obsolete (or even silly), other than for code organization (it has other complications, like trait coherence).
Edit for clarification: functions not marked as inline cannot be inlined when used in another translation unit unless LTO is enabled.
It's nice to see someone write about failures in a very neutral and informative way, as it is a daily part of our jobs and life but most of what you read online is (logically) about successes.
It's hard not just to sweep all the bad ideas and half-way steps under the rug and hit the world with this "aren't I clever" looking final product (without really helping anyone learn how to get there themselves on their own projects).
"Sloc Cloc and Code – What Happened on the Way to Faster Cloc" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17232884
