The code bloat is just an issue for first timers maybe, use svgmin before inlining, and it would reduce the file size significantly. I used it at my projects, 15 SVG icons - 9KB to < 2KB. Then inlined them, now can change fill on hover and lot more. Inlining saves a lot of request overhead. Worried about repetition, the gzip compression takes care of all that.
SVG are awesome, but only if you are careful.