Yeah, but the whole point is you don't have a fixed length record. And in the example given you shouldn't be using strings at all - integers will suffice - that's the real problem with this benchmark.

You might as well be testing how quickly thrift / pb / json could serialize / deserialize pickled blobs. Your not giving thrift or pb the data it's designed to perform well with, so the fact that it fails isn't surprising.

I'm sure a tesla would suck compared to an ancient pickup at helping me pick up a couch from craigslist, but I wouldn't say that the pickup is a better car because of that.