Comment by notyourwork

16 days ago

Really dismissive and ignorant take from a bystander. Back it up with your delivery that does better instead of shouting with a pitchfork for no reason.

This bystander has been using protobufs for more than ten years. I'm not sure what I need to deliver since ASN.1, Cap'n Proto and Flatbuffers are all more efficient and exist already. ASN.1 was on the scene in 1984 and was already more efficient than protobufs.

  • Protobuf has far better ergonomics than ASN.1. ASN.1 is an overcomplicated design-by-committee mess. Backwards compatibility in particular is much harder.

    • I don't doubt your experience, but with X.509 having evolved substantially, and ASN.1 on billions (if not tens of billions) of devices, in practice it seems OK. And it was formally verified early.

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