[alasdair_young]

I wasn't out and out asked, but it certainly came up when trying to optimize a solution.

NOTE: if you are a Java developer, make sure you remember that bytes are signed! (I have no idea who thought that one was a good idea)

[yzhengyu]

I can't remember it, but there was an interview where Gosling said it was for simplicity.

And rather amusingly (and if I remember correctly...) the char data type in Java is not really the equivalent of char in the other C derivatives.

[tedunangst]

Java char is c wchar. Java also has byte.