charred VS fast-json

After building tech.ml.dataset and charred I wanted to take the lessons learned there and apply them back into the base Clojure substrate of persistent maps, persistent vectors, and algorithmic primitives like group-by and frequencies.

...and in some circumstances, the most correct Clojure program has a little Java in it because it's faster or whatever. (Chris Nuernberger's charred is a recent example.) This is unusual Clojuring; most Clojurians never do this.

Introducing Charred - fast json/csv encode and decode. This library finalizes my research into csv and json parsing and is a complete drop-in replacement for clojure.data.csv and clojure.data.json. Same API, much better (5-10x) performance. This library gets as good performance for those tasks as anything on the JVM and avoids the jackson hairball entirely.

There are many more things there but you can read the README for more information. There is timing information at the bottom of the README and the fast-json project includes a comparison. My hope is that ham-fisted becomes a platform to try out ideas and build faster datastructures and algorithms that follow in the typeless functional pathway so we can carefully and measurably improve the platform we all are standing on. So please take it, try some things out, and let me know how it goes :-).