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JSON is the best interchange format ever invented. I don't understand why anyone would want to change it. It's: - Simple - Human and machine readable - Compa

JSON is the best interchange format ever invented. I don't understand why anyone would want to change it. It's: - Simple - Human and machine readable - Compatible - Searchable - Debuggable - Relatively fast encoding/decoding - Small size I think Protocol Buffers is yet another misguided attempt to reinvent the wheel. If you did a pros and cons analysis on Protocol Buffers, you'd quickly realize that you lose in simplicity, lose on human readability, lose on compatibility (since it can introduce a reliance on specific type systems which different services will have to agree with), it's less searchable, less debuggable... The only benefit of Protocol Buffers over JSON is that in some languages it's a bit faster to encode and decode... In some environments the speed difference is negligible. I can't think of any use case where ProtoBuf would be superior. I still don't understand how it could have become so popular. I guess it has Google's name behind it; that must be why.

postalrat 6y ago
This must be a bot. Randomly brings up protocol buffers and all the good points for json also apply to s-expressions.
ktpsns 6y ago
JSON is by far not the universal exchange format. There are plenty of use cases where JSON is not well suited, such as: - regular/tabular data where JSON fails at processing speed and/or compressibility. One of the most efficient ways to store for instance a table/array of numbers is packing them as binary IEEE754 stream. - encapsulation of other code. Ever put HTML in a string within JSON? It's terrible to read and maintain for a human due to all the escaping. If you ever embedded SVG into XML/HTML or XML/HTML in JSX, you know how easy it can be if you don't have to break your head about escaping. - Obviously there is a need for binary json (there exist a lot of proposals/standards). That's quite similar to protocol buffers. The reason is always something about performance. - Also there are folks arguing since decades about JSON vs. XML vs. YAML vs. TOML vs .... There are lot of different opinions, and it is hard to say some is superiour to the other.
- cryptica 6y ago
  Trying to standardize binary as a flexible and general purpose interchange format is unwise IMO. UDP and TCP (and other protocols at that level) are about as far as we can standardize binary formats - This is as specific as they can be whilst still being generally applicable to a wide range of use cases. My problem with ProtoBuf is that you can't impose more a more rigid structure and get more compatibility at the same time. A more rigid (statically typed) structure is inherently less compatible/interoperable (requires more integration effort, not less; harder to debug, not human readable, not searchable etc... More integration effort = less compatible, less interoperable).

postalrat 6y ago

This must be a bot. Randomly brings up protocol buffers and all the good points for json also apply to s-expressions.

ktpsns 6y ago

JSON is by far not the universal exchange format. There are plenty of use cases where JSON is not well suited, such as: - regular/tabular data where JSON fails at processing speed and/or compressibility. One of the most efficient ways to store for instance a table/array of numbers is packing them as binary IEEE754 stream. - encapsulation of other code. Ever put HTML in a string within JSON? It's terrible to read and maintain for a human due to all the escaping. If you ever embedded SVG into XML/HTML or XML/HTML in JSX, you know how easy it can be if you don't have to break your head about escaping. - Obviously there is a need for binary json (there exist a lot of proposals/standards). That's quite similar to protocol buffers. The reason is always something about performance. - Also there are folks arguing since decades about JSON vs. XML vs. YAML vs. TOML vs .... There are lot of different opinions, and it is hard to say some is superiour to the other.

cryptica 6y ago
Trying to standardize binary as a flexible and general purpose interchange format is unwise IMO. UDP and TCP (and other protocols at that level) are about as far as we can standardize binary formats - This is as specific as they can be whilst still being generally applicable to a wide range of use cases. My problem with ProtoBuf is that you can't impose more a more rigid structure and get more compatibility at the same time. A more rigid (statically typed) structure is inherently less compatible/interoperable (requires more integration effort, not less; harder to debug, not human readable, not searchable etc... More integration effort = less compatible, less interoperable).