When I think of message passing, I think of message queues. There should be an arbiter, a medium of message passing so you can control how that message is passed and how it will arrive.
Java and C++ way of message passing both stripped that medium down to a simple vtable to look up what methods the object has. Erlang and go have the right idea of passing messages through a medium that can serialize and multiprocess it. C# tries to do with further abstractions like parallelized linq queries and C#, python and nodejs use async/await to delegate the messages to event queues. Python can also send messages to multiple processes. All this shows us that message passing requires a medium that primitive method calls lack.
>both stripped that medium down to a simple vtable to look up what methods the object has.
If they use vtable it'd be just slow. Not needing the trampoline and ability to inline harder is what makes it fast. The usual case is class hierarchy analysis,static calls (no more than a single implementer proven by the compiler), guarded calls (check +inline, java deoptimizes, if need be), bi-morphic call site inline, inline caches and if that fails - the vtable thing.
Message passing in a classical way is just awfully slow for a bottom of the stack building block. It doesn't map to the hardware.
It does makes sense for concurrency with bounded, lock free queues (actor model). But at some point, someone has to do the heavy lifting.
Java and C++ way of message passing both stripped that medium down to a simple vtable to look up what methods the object has. Erlang and go have the right idea of passing messages through a medium that can serialize and multiprocess it. C# tries to do with further abstractions like parallelized linq queries and C#, python and nodejs use async/await to delegate the messages to event queues. Python can also send messages to multiple processes. All this shows us that message passing requires a medium that primitive method calls lack.