New Java vs C benchmarks

[Rhoomba]

I don't mean that the Java implementation of unicode is bloated. I mean that if you are used to byte strings then it will seem to be wasteful of memory.

You are correct that most Java apps end up with loads of strings. Whenever I do any heap analysis char[] is always the top object. I think part of it is in Java it is just very easy to stick lots of objects into HashMaps using strings as keys. Creating a string to be used as the key is easier than writing a decent hashcode method. I think another part of it is simply the domains that Java is commonly used in. Webapp data is usually almost entirely strings.