[TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?

[Larry McVoy]

> I used to tell people that the time required to make a good optimizing C
> compiler grew as the cube of the size of the instruction manual, 

So this has nothing to do with Unix but it triggered this memory.
My dad, physics prof, rhodes scholar, told me this when we started
backpacking together:

The population density drops like 1/r^2 the distance from the parking lot.