The article makes an argument that the hand-rolled solution is less buggy, if you approach it the right way. For complicated data structures, it's probably bes

The article makes an argument that the hand-rolled solution is less buggy, if you approach it the right way. For complicated data structures, it's probably best to use a library that serializes to a common standard. (For example, protocol buffers or JSON.) But I think the article assumes you don't get to choose the protocol, so it probably has to be hand-written by someone.