Are Function Calls Still Slow in Python? An Analysis of Recent Optimizations in CPython

I came across this viral post on X/Twitter where Pritam found that his Leetcode solution was slower when he was using Python’s min built-in function and the performance improved when he implemented min inline in his Python code. It’s true that function calls can be costly, they are known to be even more costly in interpreted languages such as Python. And the usual recommendation has been to inline