Field vs Property. Optimisation of performance

Question

Please note this question related to performance only. Lets skip design guidelines, philosophy, compatibility, portability and anything what is not related to pure performan

Answer 1

The JIT will inline any method (not just a getter) that its internal metrics determine will be faster inlined. Given that a standard property is return _Property; it will be inlined in every case.

The reason you are seeing different behavior is that in Debug mode with a debugger attached, the JIT is significantly handicapped, to ensure that any stack locations match what you would expect from the code.

You are also forgetting the number one rule of performance, testing beats thinking. For instance even though quick sort is asymptotically faster than insertion sort, insertion sort is actually faster for extremely small inputs.