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by basugasubaku 6140 days ago
He was (understandably) a bit sensitive about new works displacing his. He almost seemed to suspect some sort of conspiracy against Hpricot:

"Clearly, the benchmarks you see on Ruby Inside are skewed to favor Nokogiri... Why not treat Hpricot fairly and use it properly in the benchmarks? It reeks of something."

http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/181699
1 comments
petercooper 6140 days ago
As the editor of Ruby Inside, I can confirm we (or me, as author of the piece) were not involved in any conspiracy or malicious intent against Hpricot. Heck, Why even wrote the foreword for my book :)

Further, the benchmarks we republished were not by us, but just a screenshot of benchmarks shared by the creator of Nokogiri.

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thismat 6140 days ago
This bothers me honestly, why would you accept benchmark screenshots from someone that made claims against another persons code?

Was this an interview or something? Was _why alerted to this as a chance to refute the claim by providing his own benchmarks? Could the data even be validated and not easily doctored?

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petercooper 6139 days ago
The benchmarks were from what was designed to be a fair test. It might not have worked out that way, but that was the intention of the creator nonetheless. I stuck a massive disclaimer on my link to those benchmarks and let people at it (since NO benchmarks are EVER undisputed - biggest lesson I've learned). The post is at http://www.rubyinside.com/ruby-xml-performance-benchmarks-16... if you want to see how it was portrayed.

If everyone had to bother validating all the third party bits and pieces that get referenced on blogs, no-one would blog. Blogging is a "hey, check this out, I ain't saying it's true, but you might find it interesting" type of affair - it's not the New York Times (which is why regular journalism is foundering; it's expensive to fact check everything and, heck, it's a Ruby blog, not a trusted source of journalism).

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bunnny 6133 days ago
Yeah, it sounds like you were really trying to be thoughtful, gracious, and evenhanded in your comparisons:

Nokogiri: A Faster, Better HTML and XML Parser for Ruby (than Hpricot) http://www.rubyinside.com/nokogiri-ruby-html-parser-and-xml-...

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thismat 6139 days ago
I figured it had to be something of that nature, and indeed, the disclaimer is clear about the data presented.

Upvoted for the explanation, thanks.

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