Comment by masklinn

> It is two different storage mechanisms

An irrelevant implementation detail. Interned strings are also stored globally, and depending on implementations interned strings may or may not be subject to memory reclaiming.

> Ruby does not care for efficiency, so there is no point to argue for symbols vs string performance

Which is why Ruby's having symbols is associated with mutable strings, not inefficient strings.

And there's a gulf between not caring too much about efficiency and strings being a linked list of integers, which is what they are in Erlang.