Java Integer pool. Why?

Question

I\'ve read everywhere that when you define an Integer between -128 to 127 in Java, instead of creating a new object it returns an object already created.

I don\'t se

Answer 1

I think that creating any object takes more time than taking it from the symbol table. Moreover, if I am not mistaken, every object on the heap takes up 24 bytes of additional space for the header. Now, if a programmer writes his/her program, most of the operations are done on small ints (in this case, small Integers). So it allows to save a lot of space and to improve performance a little.