Expected speed for large files/what is "slow"?

[cyrusae]

I am trying to figure out if the time elapsed using fromJSON that I'm looking at is typical or a red flag; I apologize if that's not appropriate to raise an issue about.

I'm using files from these API endpoints (i.e., I get JSON in, I do not have control over the form of the JSON before it is imported, it is theoretically the same every time), namely the default cards and all cards bulk files. I use download.file() to retrieve them and then load the saved files with fromJSON.

The ~281mb default cards file takes between 65 and 95 seconds to fromJSON in. The ~1.5gb all cards file, which is similarly-structured because they're both sets of Card objects, takes between 25 and 45 minutes. (I am using R 4.2.1 in RStudio on Windows 11 with a SSD and 64gb of RAM, if that matters; peak memory usage tops out around ~12gb RAM.)

Is that in the realm of reasonable expectation for files of this size/complexity, including the nonlinear increase in processing time, or should I be treating it as a red flag? I have no basis of comparison for JSON as opposed to CSV and don't mean to be disrespectful if the answer is in fact that this is as fast as it gets, I just didn't want to assume that was normal.

To reproduce/see on your own machine:

1. Get https://api.scryfall.com/bulk-data directly from that url to get the download links for "default" and "all cards" data
2. download.file() the JSON for "default" and "all" cards
3. Try fromJSON() on the resulting files (I am using default settings)
4. (Optional) The numbers I'm citing are from benchmarking with tictoc.