Yes, this is a very important point, (T)JSON is self-describing in ways protobufs or other similar on-the-wire formats are not. Making sense of a protobuf invol

Yes, this is a very important point, (T)JSON is self-describing in ways protobufs or other similar on-the-wire formats are not. Making sense of a protobuf involves both knowing what type of protobuf you're looking at in advance (protobufs are NOT self-identifying) and loading the corresponding schema. Otherwise each member of a protobuf is identified by an integer, so good luck guessing what each field represents.