Performance regression: 2.7x slower since v0.10.0

[rafafloresta]

Summary

Benchmarking revealed a significant performance regression in Blueprinter since v0.10.0:

Metric	v0.10.0	v1.2.1 (current)	Change
Speed (i/s)	5.16	1.92	2.7x slower
Memory	26.7 MB	112 MB	4.2x more

Benchmark Results

Speed (iterations/second, higher is better)

v0.10.0:

               panko:       10.6 i/s
             as_json:        9.9 i/s
        fast_jsonapi:        4.4 i/s - 2.42x slower
         blueprinter:        3.2 i/s - 3.33x slower

v1.2.1 (current):

               panko:        7.9 i/s
             as_json:        7.4 i/s - 1.08x slower
        fast_jsonapi:        4.7 i/s - 1.69x slower
         blueprinter:        1.5 i/s - 5.40x slower

Memory (allocated bytes, lower is better)

v0.10.0:

         blueprinter:   26.7 MB allocated - 1.16x more than as_json

v1.2.1 (current):

         blueprinter:  112.0 MB allocated - 4.86x more than as_json

Bisect Results

The regression is cumulative across multiple commits:

Commit	Description	i/s	vs v0.10.0
v0.10.0	Baseline	5.16	1.0x
0bea7cb	Add reflection/extensions	3.76	1.4x slower
0acf5d1	Fix default_transformers	3.06	1.7x slower
795953b	Fallback on :default	2.75	1.9x slower
e39f3c8	Extract rendering	2.23	2.3x slower
main	Current	1.92	2.7x slower

Key commits contributing to regression:

1. 0acf5d1 - "Fix handling of configured default_transformers" (Dec 2023)

   • Added .concat().uniq operations in transformer gathering

2. e39f3c8 - "[refactor] Extract rendering functionality and cleanup code" (Oct 2024)

   • Major refactor extracting rendering logic

Benchmark Setup

• Ruby: 3.3.9
• Objects: 10,000 Issue objects with nested User and Labels (2-4 labels each)
• Tools: benchmark-ips, benchmark-memory

Reference

Based on Issue #113 benchmark by @tjwallace.

[rafafloresta]

Updated benchmark with Alba included:

Speed (iterations/second, higher is better)

               panko:        5.7 i/s
             as_json:        5.4 i/s - same-ish
        fast_jsonapi:        2.8 i/s - 2.03x slower
                alba:        2.2 i/s - 2.56x slower
                roar:        0.6 i/s - 8.78x slower
         blueprinter:        0.6 i/s - 9.10x slower
        grape_entity:        0.5 i/s - 10.53x slower
                 ams:        0.1 i/s - 68.70x slower

Memory (allocated bytes, lower is better)

             as_json:   23.0 MB allocated
               panko:   23.0 MB allocated - 1.00x more
                alba:   24.6 MB allocated - 1.07x more
        fast_jsonapi:   25.2 MB allocated - 1.09x more
        grape_entity:  100.5 MB allocated - 4.36x more
         blueprinter:  111.9 MB allocated - 4.86x more
                roar:  120.0 MB allocated - 5.21x more
                 ams:  244.4 MB allocated - 10.61x more

Notable: Alba (a newer serializer) is 3.5x faster than Blueprinter and uses 4.5x less memory.