No, I don't try to decode them directly if I can avoid it. We handrolled a C-based byte packer for our honeybadger project only because function access is relatively slow on the interpreter we have on low end TVs, but reading blocks through a Uint8Array is pretty fast. Writeup is here: http://alifetodo.blogspot.com/2016/05/project-honeybadger-pi... . I can push the C packer to github if there's interest, but since you mention NodeJS, you might have better luck with Paulson's benchmark NodeJS example: https://github.com/michaelbpaulson/flatbuffers-benchmarks
On consideration I don't think flat buffers is worth the added complexity. Using basically C structs is sure faster, and suitable for low end devices and clients written in C. But JSON have many advantages.
No, I don't try to decode them directly if I can avoid it. We handrolled a C-based byte packer for our honeybadger project only because function access is relatively slow on the interpreter we have on low end TVs, but reading blocks through a Uint8Array is pretty fast. Writeup is here: http://alifetodo.blogspot.com/2016/05/project-honeybadger-pi... . I can push the C packer to github if there's interest, but since you mention NodeJS, you might have better luck with Paulson's benchmark NodeJS example: https://github.com/michaelbpaulson/flatbuffers-benchmarks