Not really. Python primitives are smaller (24 bytes). Python strings are 37 + 1 byte per character. Python objects are 72 bytes. Python classes are 104 bytes. (Got these numbers playing around with sys.getsizeof in the python console.)

Primitives are a bit bigger in ruby, but they aren't really primitives anyway (everything is an object).

Python is another offender!

What languages are you referring to than? Perl and PHP are really the only others that are sort of in the same class as Ruby and Python.

Smalltalk, for one.

Perl objects are even bigger and need one indirection per access. A perl head is 32 bytes plus 48 byte body, ie. 80byte on 64bit systems.

For my perl rewrite p2 I need one single word per object on the stack. Common Lisps usually needs two words, the class pointer and the tagged value.

I really liked the visualization of the various GC's btw. Excellent work!

I have no idea of the size in other language implementations, but notice 40 bytes is on x86-64, on 32 bit it's either 20 or 24.

this is why running large ruby apps on 64 bit OSs can take up a lot more memory than 32 bit.

isn't that true of most platforms? I know the JVM has compressed OOPS to limit this issue, but I am not aware of similar things elsewhere.