I think the reason the design is this way is because it was really convenient to get the ASN.1 format out of OpenSSL for the first implementation. If the protoc

I think the reason the design is this way is because it was really convenient to get the ASN.1 format out of OpenSSL for the first implementation. If the protocol was designed today, there would be no ASN.1 involved at all. (see other comments for the problems associated with ASN.1 parsing)