Convenience is rarely economical. Shredded cheese tends to be more expensive
than a block of the same type. Pre-chopped vegetables are the same way. But when
you spend that little extra, you gain that back in time that you don’t have to
spend doing the prep work. Technology doesn’t always work that way. I recently
encountered a scenario where using the “easier” method actually cost a shit ton
more in CPU cycles.
Let me set the stage, I’m working on a system that generates static sites. It
uses jade for the templates because it’s faster to write out than
raw HTML so the development cost is low. This sounds great in theory but this
development speed comes at a cost. You see, converting the jade templates to
HTML isn’t exactly the fastest thing in the world. This additional templating
layer also happens to be entirely optional.
When I say the conversion isn’t fast, I mean it was taking upwards of 18 minutes
to generate a site with roughly 1500 pages from the jade templates. I knew
damn well that it could run faster. My first thought was that the issue was
jade and that perhaps I should be using something like ejs or one of the
many other templating enginesthat exist in node land.
That thought process was quite flawed because at the end of the day I’d still be
adding an unnecessary abstraction layer to the system. My solution? It would
take a bit more time to code, but I figured simply assembling my HTML string in
node would be the best way to solve the problem. My approach was to build out
a string programatically:
var html = ''
html += [
'<div>',
' <h1>Title</h1>',
'</div>',
].join("n"
You get the idea, nothing sophisticated at all. I prefer to work with arrays
because it allows me to simulate multiple line strings with minimal effort.
It took a bit of time to port over the jade templates, but it was worth it.
Remember that I said the site was taking upwards of 18 minutes to generate? The
new “raw JavaScript” method was taking a mere 4 seconds to do the same amount of
effort. Yes, it was processing in less than 1% of the jade version.
Convenience always comes at a cost, and sometimes that cost isn’t monetary.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t use jade or any other templating system, but you
should understand the ramifications of your choices. Depending on what you’re
doing those choices could have a serious impact on your user or, like my
scenario, your server load.
Have you implemented a hack that allowed you execute code in 1% the time as
before? Would love to hear about your incredible hacks, comment below!
