https://auth0.com/blog/beating-json-performance-with-protobu...
This thread is about protobuf vs JSON in a JavaScript environment.
The article you linked _does_ talk about JavaScript environments, too, but the numbers are much less impressive.
I'm saying that computer science and hardware dictate that protocol buffers are faster for a wide range of reasons. That part's not in question- smaller data encodings have better cache use, and require far fewer dictionary (hash table) lookups at parse time, as well as far length work parsing strings. If you want to argue against my point there I don't know what to say.
If it was a priority to write a blindingly fast protocol buffer parser in JS, it's almost certain than an expert could write a faster one than a similar JSON parser.
My attitude here is that I made a specific observation: JSON is likely to be faster or at least negligibly slower in browsers in practice.
Everyone is replying either with theoretical speed comparisons or server-to-server non-JavaScript benchmarks, which don't seem relevant to my very specific observation I made up top...
There's nothing in your comment that hadn't already been said before by sibling commenters but as far as I've seen in the real world JSON appears to be faster in practice. Which is all that counts.
Yours and the many other commenters making the same assumption (it's binary ergo it must be fast) make a really good case for PB's adoption being rooted in theoretical assumptions rather than real-world benefit.
I get it. It makes sense that it should be faster. Nothing is self evident though. You gotta measure it.