I feel the need, the need for speed.
By Lauren Boland | July 10, 2025
One of my favorite computer science quotes is from the father of algorithms himself, Donald Knuth.
"Premature optimization is the root of all evil."
He was really talking about complex algorithms, but a lot of software engineers use this phrase to mean: Get it working, then making it faster. In a lot of ways I think that it's the right way to move forward on large projects. But, when I released FIREproof into Beta, I had an initial flurry of bugs... and lost track of any semblance of optimization.
Once the major things were fixed, I was left with a strange error in my logs that I'd never seen before "Large HTTP Payload".
It turns out that the users of FIREproof are a lot more comprehensive that I am. While I was testing, I used 3-4 different accounts to simulate different holdings. The Beta users have been inputting as high as 18 separate accounts! The simulation had been passing back ALL of the data generated for all 18 accounts. That's 30-50 years of data, 100-120 possible cycles of data. For each year of each cycle, every account would have a log of each asset class (equities, bonds, cash) and each transaction that occurred on that asset that year (withdrawals, deposits, rebalance actions, taxes, etc). This lead some of the JSON payloads to be 80+mb! On slower connections, people were literally just timing out.
With the most recent update, I've added some need optimization to the flow. When the Proof page initially loads, it only loads summary data. When you change the cycle, it will make a small API call to fetch data for only that cycle. When you click into an account, it will finally load the transaction-level data.
I hope that this improves some of the user experience out there!
-Lauren
Support this project!
This project is launching as a Beta version, but I'm including a subscription for a "Pro" version. This version will be the first to see new features, and will have a limited set of features available only to them. These subscriptions will support development of this tool and allow me to consider spending even more time on this project (Early Retirement anyone? A girl can dream).
