In the ideal world, if virtual functions had no performance overhead, then yes, you could go make almost every function virtual. Of course, static functions cannot be virtual and static functions are useful things to have around. There are probably some other cases where having the functions not be virtual might be useful, but I can''t think of it at the moment.

Of course we don''t live in an ideal world, and making functions virtual does have a cost. Off the top of my head virtual function overhead comes in the following ways:
1) increased number of instructions in order to call a virtual function. mov and call on an x86 as compared to just a call, in addition it has a double indirection on that, which can make a difference on pipeline stalls and cache misses. This takes up additional clock cycles as well as increases the executable size (i.e. also fouls up the instruction cache.)
2) loads vtable which pollutes the data cache. (as compared to a non-virtual call)
3) increases number and size of vtables. (increases executable size, wastes memory)
4) opportunity cost in register allocation as vtable index is loaded into a register.

Combined, these make very good reasons not to put virtual function calls in a tight loop. Most other cases you probably wouldn''t notice it, but call a virtual pixel plotting function in your blitting routine, and you''re going to have trouble.

Declaring variables private, is good if you know that it would be a design flaw for a child class to mess with a particular variable. Ex: you have a variable that counts the number of times one of two functions are called. You don''t want any child classes modifying the count, so you can declare that variable private.

I believe you misunderstand me with regards to static and virtual member functions. A static member function is not the same as a standard member function. i.e. A static member function is a function that belongs to the class and is not bound to a particular instance of the class. A standard member function will be called according to the type of the pointer used to indicate the object. A virtual function is a member funciton that when called off a pointer is guaranteed to call the overrided function of a class no matter what type of pointer is used to indicate the object.

Because there is that overhead, if a function does not need to be virtual, I use a standard member function. Does that clear things up?

quote:
if performance wasn''t a problem, would it be a good idea to make all functions virtual?

Nope, the only time you should make a function virtual (even if there is no speed cost) is when you want subclasses to be able to provide their own implementation of the function. In some classes that might be all functions (although not the ones used in a constructor or destructor), but not in all classes.