The point is that keeping the distinction clear in your head between numeric semantics and sequence of octets semantics makes the problem universally tractible.

The point is that keeping the distinction clear in your head between numeric semantics and sequence of octets semantics makes the problem universally tractible. You have a data structure where with a numeric value. Here you have a sequence of octets described by some protocol formalism, BNF in the old days. The mapping from one to the other occurs in the math between octets and numeric values and the various network protocols for representing numbers. There are many more choices than just big endian or little endian. Could be ASN infinite precision ints. Could be 32 bit IEEE floats or 64 bit IEEE floats. The distinction is universal between language semantics and external representations. This is why people that memcpy structs right into the buf get such derision, even if it’s faster and written for a mono-Implementation of a language semantics. It is sloppy thought made manifest.