I love how this post, almost to a fault, just jumps right in. No BS set up. Not even context set up. Just what you expected after reading the title. That's an art.

As for the context of the article, maintainability is almost always worth the cost of the function lookup. The proof here that the cost is almost non-existent means to me the maintainability is always worth the perceived (few cycles) impact unless this is real-time code.