Reflection for plugins

In C I could write a plugin by having a shared library implement the following interface:

extern "C" int initialize(SomeArgument * state);
 extern "C" int shutdown(SomeArgument * state);
 

Obviously this is a very high level interface, but I think it gets the point across. I've heard that a good use of reflection is to write plugins, but why would that be superior to what I have here? Using an interface like this gives the following advantages:

• faster (reflection isn't fast, both looking up methods and calling indirectly)


• memory (reflection has memory overhead)


• straight-forward (entry/exit points for the plugin are intuitively obvious)

Am I just missing something?

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