Decreased performance compared to the original distance_of_time_in_words

[Brotakuu]

Great gem, but the performance seems to be significantly slower than the method it replaces. Running a benchmark 10000 times, it is on average 4x slower.

Use dotiw   2.620000   0.010000   2.630000 (  2.666948)
No dotiw    0.670000   0.010000   0.680000 (  0.697011)

Any idea how to speed it up?

[guilherme]

@Brotakuu could you provide your benchmark?
I've tried this:

# clone the repo.
# gem install rails benchmark-ips
# add this file to the root folder of the repo.
$: << File.join(`pwd`.chomp, "lib")
require 'active_support/all'
require 'action_view'
require 'benchmark/ips'
require 'dotiw'

include ActionView::Helpers::DateHelper

Benchmark.ips do |bm|
  bm.report("distance_of_time_in_words") { distance_of_time_in_words(Time.now, Time.now + 100.years + 30.days + 50.seconds) }
  bm.report("old_distance_of_time_in_words") { old_distance_of_time_in_words(Time.now, Time.now + 100.years + 30.days + 50.seconds) }
  bm.compare!
end 

These are the results I got:

Calculating -------------------------------------
distance_of_time_in_words
                          2.893k (± 2.4%) i/s -     14.739k in   5.097142s
old_distance_of_time_in_words
                          7.533k (± 2.4%) i/s -     37.850k in   5.027373s

Comparison:
old_distance_of_time_in_words:     7533.1 i/s
distance_of_time_in_words:     2893.2 i/s - 2.60x  slower

[guilherme]

I've noticed that it'd include the time spent calculating: Time.now + the dates math of the arguments.
and also I am not 100% sure if I this is the worst case scenario for both.
It's an interesting problem to look. I started to poke it.

This is more accurate, for this case:

# clone the repo.
# gem install rails benchmark-ips
# add this file to the root folder of the repo.
$: << File.join(`pwd`.chomp, "lib")
require 'active_support/all'
require 'action_view'
require 'benchmark/ips'
require 'dotiw'

include ActionView::Helpers::DateHelper

Benchmark.ips do |bm|
  now = Time.now
  future_time =  Time.now + 100.years + 30.days + 50.seconds
  bm.report("distance_of_time_in_words") { distance_of_time_in_words(now,future_time) }
  bm.report("old_distance_of_time_in_words") { old_distance_of_time_in_words(now, future_time, include_seconds: true) }
  bm.compare!
end 

Warming up --------------------------------------
distance_of_time_in_words
                       379.000  i/100ms
old_distance_of_time_in_words
                         2.312k i/100ms
Calculating -------------------------------------
distance_of_time_in_words
                          3.674k (± 4.4%) i/s -     18.571k in   5.065120s
old_distance_of_time_in_words
                         24.772k (± 3.5%) i/s -    124.848k in   5.046092s

Comparison:
old_distance_of_time_in_words:    24772.5 i/s
distance_of_time_in_words:     3674.0 i/s - 6.74x  slower

Observations:

• It's interesting how is 6x because the new one split the distance in 6: (years, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds) and the old one pick just the greatest. 🤷‍♂️