Don't blindly trust profilers

• msgpack.php

  2 383 2.2 PHP

  A pure PHP implementation of the MessagePack serialization format / msgpack.org[PHP]

I recently encountered an interesting case. I was trying to optimize the MessagePack unpacking, but after testing the performance of the new faster (as I thought) version, it turned out to be slower than the original implementation. Trying to figure out which part of the code was causing the slowdown, I reran the tests with Blackfire and was surprised to see that the profiler reported a 30% improvement in the new version, which was the exact opposite of my results (read the comments on the linked issue to learn why). Note that this is not a problem with this particular profiler, most PHP profilers will do the same. So I decided to share this finding and encourage you not to blindly trust profilers and always do your own benchmarking, especially when you do such micro-optimizations.

• php-spx

  7 1,873 7.4 C

  A simple & straight-to-the-point PHP profiling extension with its built-in web UI

I've written a bit about this issue in php-spx's README https://github.com/NoiseByNorthwest/php-spx#notes-on-accuracy

• WorkOS

  workos.com sponsored

  The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. The APIs are flexible and easy-to-use, supporting authentication, user identity, and complex enterprise features like SSO and SCIM provisioning.

  

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