You should take a look at the presentation I mentioned elsewhere in this thread. You also have to keep in mind that it's not only the branches that use space, but also the error handling code. Code which must be duplicated for every single call to a particular function.
Ok, thanks. But that code needs to be loaded into memory only if the branch takes place. Which, for exceptions, will be not often. The main assumption is: optimize for the common case, where exceptions are not the common case.
