Thanks! Is the reason Strings impact performance because we can use smaller objects to do such work while Strings are larger?
Using strings for identifiers is almost always a bad idea.
If you are interfacing with other APIs that use Strings, it may make sense to just pass those through. For example loading files from disk or pulling up UI classes from the OS library using some String identifier or something. It's hard to say without more context.
Working with dynamically allocated strings, like reading from files, rendering from data bytes, working with C strings or building formatted strings, might have worse performance characteristics.
[1] Yeah yeah, CPUs & standard libraries are smarter than that, I know, I know. You get the point.