4 ms·

Why msg.proto? Why not json? This seems like an odd dependency to me, and it seems like it adds no value.

• pknopf 8y ago
  Performance.
  • VikingCoder 8y ago
    That seems highly unlikely. I'm going off of what I've seen myself, and what I've seen in the xi editor: https://github.com/google/xi-editor https://github.com/google/xi-editor "The protocol for front-end / back-end communication, as well as between the back-end and plug-ins, is based on simple JSON messages. I considered binary formats, but the actual improvement in performance would be completely in the noise. Using JSON considerably lowers friction for developing plug-ins, as it’s available out of the box for most modern languages, and there are plenty of the libraries available for the other ones."
    • dwetterau 8y ago
      Does the xi editor use a JSON transport layer for all syscalls though? Low-friction interfaces for developers are great but I'm not sure I agree with the comparison here.
      • VikingCoder 8y ago
        Yes, it does. The frontend and the backend only speak JSON.
    • inimino 8y ago
      "Performance" in a text editor means latency, and it's not going to matter there when the text editor also has to edit the text, update the display, etc. "Performance" in a server also means throughput. There's a reason why protobufs exist and it is all about performance (and type safety which is related) and there's no way JSON serialize/deserialize overhead, in both directions every time, is going to be a good choice here.