The enemy of optimization is hard to maintain code Then why add string serialization to something that doesn't remotely need it? Using text in this case makes

The enemy of optimization is hard to maintain code Then why add string serialization to something that doesn't remotely need it? Using text in this case makes the wire protocol easier to debug and generally easier to maintain for forward compatibility. If anything the use an unspecified string format makes debugging potentially harder here (UDP truncation...).