3 ms·
>Some of the serialized data was stored as XML (over 1M lines!), which was slow to parse and load. Rich modified the program to serialize the data as Ruby code,
by RhodesianHunter 3y ago
>Some of the serialized data was stored as XML (over 1M lines!), which was slow to parse and load. Rich modified the program to serialize the data as Ruby code, which loaded much faster
So he took a data format designed for human readability and converted it to a data format that's designed purely to be read by Ruby and people are surprised that it's faster?
- ckolkey 3y agoIt sounds like the novel idea was thinking to do that in the first place
- RhodesianHunter 3y ago"Use a more performant serialization format" is hardly novel. It's why things like protobuf exist.
- giraffe_lady 3y agolol what do you want here. "ok you're right, the approach that worked is bad we should have waited for the astute technical insight of an anonymous internet commenter two decades later." you got it bud A++ are you looking for work you seem delightful.
- RhodesianHunter 3y agoI'm not sure why you're so upset over this. All I've done is point out that some people put a ton of work into a great deal of engineering effort to solve a problem that would have been trivially solved by merely using a different choice of serialization format. Even 10 years ago the technology to do so was widely available and standardized. But I mean sure, WOOHOO, what a great achievement!
- skitter 3y agoI think a bigger difference is that the XML is parsed by a Ruby program and the generated Ruby code is parsed by a C program.
- RhodesianHunter 3y agoUsing something like protobuf would have required fewer steps and adhered to a standardized format.
- foldor 3y agoI would argue that an XML file that's "over 1M lines!" is no longer human readable.
- RhodesianHunter 3y agoThat's not the point though.