This is quite fantastic. I think I'm going to make the switch very soon! I hope this'll save a few hundred milliseconds every time I hit `:w`. That happens a lot when I can stand the look of my ugly designs.
On the other hand, I don't see the long-term benefit clearly that would justify writing this in C++. Most of these open source mini-movements hit maintenance and motivation barriers after some time, not performance ones. Although this could mean Sass overcame the prototype phase quite successfully.
Also, at first sight it seems to me that the author of this library is the same as of Sass' itself. (Please correct me.) In this case, congratulations! Must be a real pleasure to see such a big improvement to what once was a pet project. :)
Actually, I'm the primary developer of the library (I work with hcatlin). Large Sass projects can take a long time to compile (more than several seconds), so the performance increase should not be dismissed. Also, providing a C/C++ library makes it easier to embed Sass in other languages and platforms.
Are there plans to e.g. make the Sass gem we all use take advantage of this native code? That is, will I one day do a `bundle update` and be rewarded with speedy asset compilation?
I just saw hcatlin's presentation on the future of Sass at RailsConf and he mentioned that large codebases (>50k lines) could take over 30s (think he said sometimes up to 2 minutes). One of his key points was that, since Sass is partially aimed at non-technical designers, it needed to be both faster and more accessible.
On the other hand, I don't see the long-term benefit clearly that would justify writing this in C++. Most of these open source mini-movements hit maintenance and motivation barriers after some time, not performance ones. Although this could mean Sass overcame the prototype phase quite successfully.
Also, at first sight it seems to me that the author of this library is the same as of Sass' itself. (Please correct me.) In this case, congratulations! Must be a real pleasure to see such a big improvement to what once was a pet project. :)