They definitely don't have to be. I've echoed these sentiments before. However, HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 certainly are, though the reasons why they are complicated ha

They definitely don't have to be. I've echoed these sentiments before. However, HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 certainly are, though the reasons why they are complicated have nothing to do with choosing to use a binary based format. (They are complicated for good reason, though, and I hope that browsers and servers can continue to support HTTP/1 as the baseline till the sun burns out, just to make life easier.)