Why are compiled Java class files smaller than C compiled files?

Question

I would like to know why the .o file that we get from compiling a .c file that prints \"Hello, World!\" is larger than a Java .class file that also prints \"Hello, World!\"?

Answer 1

A few potential reasons:

• The Java class file does not include initialization code at all. It just has your one class and one function in it - very small indeed. In comparison, the C program has some degree of statically-linked initialization code, and possibly DLL thunks.
• The C program may also have sections aligned to page boundaries - this would add a minimum of 4kb to the program size just like that, in order to ensure the code segment starts on a page boundary.