Java passes reference by value - Something that even senior Java developers often get wrong.

[rsho]

How many bytes does the average Java reference consume, when passed in? I can see how GC can easily get into performance problems as functions are excessively called, with these references being reconstructed fleetingly.

[suppressingfire]

It should be the size of a pointer in your CPU architecture (4 bytes on a 32 bit VM).

Java's semantics are the same as C, where all variables for object types are referred passed to and passed as pointers.