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Clearly, that's not what they wrote. They told people to fix their code that generate broken utf-8 instead, implying that validating fast is pointless since you

by jraph 3y ago

Clearly, that's not what they wrote. They told people to fix their code that generate broken utf-8 instead, implying that validating fast is pointless since you don't need to validate at all. I don't understand how you came up with this interpretation. And I'm also not sure what you call out as a bad counterargument and how you would do what you suggest. And even if you don't validate on the hot path, it doesn't hurt to do it faster, so I don't understand why one would be against a more efficient computation. But that's not what I'm answering to, and I was not taking sides so I don't know why you would reply to my comment with this. I was just clarifying something. I'm answering a comment that might have misread what they answered too, that's it.

Dylan16807 3y ago
I replied to you because you made the implication much more direct in your wording, but the implication is wrong. I'm not saying it's your opinion, you just made it easier to reply to. OP was saying not to validate as part of your normal pipeline. They weren't saying not to validate ever, such as while poking around or testing, which is how you could still figure out that bad utf-8 exists and where it is coming from. > And even if you don't validate on the hot path, it doesn't hurt to do it faster, so I don't understand why one would be against a more efficient computation. It's not about being for or against the speed of calculation. It's that removing unnecessary calculations is even faster. So questioning the need is good. If 'hot path' was unclear and you think I'm making things up, let me try a different wording. As a hypothetical: If I don't think something needs to be validated in production, I might question a library dedicated to doing it really fast, and say your producers should be fixed instead. Me saying that doesn't mean I think you should be stumbling around blind, never testing those producers.
- ncruces 3y ago
  You don't think JSON should be validated in production? Presumably you think you should always be able to trust anyone who sends you JSON? I mean Go already does a bunch of UTF-8 validations in its JSON encoder/decoder [1]. No need to make those faster. [1] https://pkg.go.dev/encoding/json#Marshal https://pkg.go.dev/encoding/json#Marshal
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    Hi, what? I said hypothetical, and I did not use the word JSON.
    - ncruces 3y ago
      Both JSON encoding and decoding require UTF-8 validation. If there's a workload that makes sense to optimize because it's used in production, it's UTF-8 validation. So why are we even arguing whether UTF-8 validation is necessary/useful in the "hot path" or in "production"?
      - Dylan16807 3y ago
        So you asked what I thought, but I never gave an opinion on UTF-8, I gave a generic hypothetical. If you're asking about OP's idea, then I agree that validating the UTF-8 inside of JSON is needed sometimes, though it's not required in all situations. But I wasn't commenting on that, I was commenting on the specific objection of "how do you know if you don't check?", because I don't think that specific objection is very strong.
- jraph 3y ago
  > you just made it easier to reply to Ah, makes sense. Thanks! Well, the implication is not wrong. If you validate only during testing, you never validate some inputs, the ones that matter: user input. I now see what you mean by hot path, I was imagining something like validating asynchronously, later, when not serving a request for instance.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    That all depends on context. If users are submitting data then you don't have access to the producers. I think user data is a good objection, and other people brought that up immediately, I just think it's a different objection than the idea of "if you never check, how will you know?".
    - jraph 3y ago
      Fair enough, though it seemed disingenuous of OP to question the optimization of a hugely common process and say "just fix your code" when it's not applicable to a vast (majority?) number of (obvious?) cases. It's not like a huge part of today's computer software was not currently running on servers needing to check user input, including the very website we are commenting on. Browsers themselves need to do it too because they can't blindly trust what the server sends them. It seems like it almost takes effort to ignore those cases. To the point people commenting here even forget that there are other things than the web. If OP wanted to share with us the idea of moving validation to another step in the process, giving a case where it would be applicable, that would have been fine but why question an optimization in the first place? Why not both? It just feels like they are rejecting stuff for the sake of rejecting stuff and I assume this is the reason they got downvoted. UTF-8 validation is something that happens constantly. And even if it's was not, this optimization is probably an interesting technical feat, and we are in a Show HN post too, rejecting stuff like this is just not going to fly on HN. You can question things but you need to be insightful and nice. You make good points but OP didn't make them. Anyways.

by jraph 3y ago

Dylan16807 3y ago

I replied to you because you made the implication much more direct in your wording, but the implication is wrong. I'm not saying it's your opinion, you just made it easier to reply to. OP was saying not to validate as part of your normal pipeline. They weren't saying not to validate ever, such as while poking around or testing, which is how you could still figure out that bad utf-8 exists and where it is coming from. > And even if you don't validate on the hot path, it doesn't hurt to do it faster, so I don't understand why one would be against a more efficient computation. It's not about being for or against the speed of calculation. It's that removing unnecessary calculations is even faster. So questioning the need is good. If 'hot path' was unclear and you think I'm making things up, let me try a different wording. As a hypothetical: If I don't think something needs to be validated in production, I might question a library dedicated to doing it really fast, and say your producers should be fixed instead. Me saying that doesn't mean I think you should be stumbling around blind, never testing those producers.

ncruces 3y ago
You don't think JSON should be validated in production? Presumably you think you should always be able to trust anyone who sends you JSON? I mean Go already does a bunch of UTF-8 validations in its JSON encoder/decoder [1]. No need to make those faster. [1] https://pkg.go.dev/encoding/json#Marshal https://pkg.go.dev/encoding/json#Marshal
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  Hi, what? I said hypothetical, and I did not use the word JSON.
  - ncruces 3y ago
    Both JSON encoding and decoding require UTF-8 validation. If there's a workload that makes sense to optimize because it's used in production, it's UTF-8 validation. So why are we even arguing whether UTF-8 validation is necessary/useful in the "hot path" or in "production"?
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      So you asked what I thought, but I never gave an opinion on UTF-8, I gave a generic hypothetical. If you're asking about OP's idea, then I agree that validating the UTF-8 inside of JSON is needed sometimes, though it's not required in all situations. But I wasn't commenting on that, I was commenting on the specific objection of "how do you know if you don't check?", because I don't think that specific objection is very strong.
jraph 3y ago
> you just made it easier to reply to Ah, makes sense. Thanks! Well, the implication is not wrong. If you validate only during testing, you never validate some inputs, the ones that matter: user input. I now see what you mean by hot path, I was imagining something like validating asynchronously, later, when not serving a request for instance.
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  That all depends on context. If users are submitting data then you don't have access to the producers. I think user data is a good objection, and other people brought that up immediately, I just think it's a different objection than the idea of "if you never check, how will you know?".
  - jraph 3y ago
    Fair enough, though it seemed disingenuous of OP to question the optimization of a hugely common process and say "just fix your code" when it's not applicable to a vast (majority?) number of (obvious?) cases. It's not like a huge part of today's computer software was not currently running on servers needing to check user input, including the very website we are commenting on. Browsers themselves need to do it too because they can't blindly trust what the server sends them. It seems like it almost takes effort to ignore those cases. To the point people commenting here even forget that there are other things than the web. If OP wanted to share with us the idea of moving validation to another step in the process, giving a case where it would be applicable, that would have been fine but why question an optimization in the first place? Why not both? It just feels like they are rejecting stuff for the sake of rejecting stuff and I assume this is the reason they got downvoted. UTF-8 validation is something that happens constantly. And even if it's was not, this optimization is probably an interesting technical feat, and we are in a Show HN post too, rejecting stuff like this is just not going to fly on HN. You can question things but you need to be insightful and nice. You make good points but OP didn't make them. Anyways.