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Technology ebbs and flows, I feel like this is a backdrift like XHTML but it will flow again. Binary in Hyper Text Transfer will never seem right. I understand

Technology ebbs and flows, I feel like this is a backdrift like XHTML but it will flow again. Binary in Hyper Text Transfer will never seem right. I understand it is more performant but it always creates more bugs, ask any game developer, binary needed but also living on the edge of indexes/ordering/headers/harder to debug/etc. Indexing, overflows, incorrect implementations, will follow. Many of the advancements in HTTP2 are good but there are some steps backwards we'll have to re-learn again. It isn't all about performance when it comes to correct interoperability as standards lead to many interpretations, it is why XML then JSON won data transfer, it is easy to interoperate, yes binary is more efficient over the wire but not to interoperate. Should we go back to binary formats for data exchange on the network? The protocol level is lower level but still it has been beneficial in the current standards to spreading innovation with lower barriers to understanding. HTTP2 is one of those 'version 2' of an app that some of the legacy genius of it was lost and overlooked in the redesign, like simplicity. An engineers job is to make something complex into something simple and blackboxing data isn't simplifying it.

nemothekid 12y ago
>HTTP2 is one of those 'version 2' of an app that some of the legacy genius of it was lost and overlooked in the redesign, like simplicity. Calling HTTP1/1.1 genius sounds like an "intelligent design" argument (as opposed to "evolution"), and I think detracts from what makes it good. What makes more sense to me is HTTP1/1.1 was invented and then we hacked/adapted/"evolved" on top of it to get it to do what we want. It wasn't the spec that was genius - it was the effort of countless engineers overtime the crammed a genius, trillion dollar industry into an "okay" spec (The same way it was done for HTML/CSS/JS). in that vein, the whole binary/plaintext header arguments seem a lot closer to "this is the way my father did it" rather than "this is the most efficient way". To counter your XML/JSON example - I would argue they won over binary formats because there a huge need for humans to write & edit data exchange structures. OTOH, I can't remember the last time I sent/edited/created HTTP Headers by hand. While JSON has tons of uses and is stored in countless places(config, user data, state data), HTTP servers are the only services that seem to care about HTTP headers.
- XorNot 12y ago
  And moreover, the new push is towards protocols which seamlessly turn JSON into binary and back again. Which is a very good way to do things, it's just so rare that anyone ever bothers to maintain and standardize both sides of something.
deleted 12y ago
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nemothekid 12y ago

>HTTP2 is one of those 'version 2' of an app that some of the legacy genius of it was lost and overlooked in the redesign, like simplicity. Calling HTTP1/1.1 genius sounds like an "intelligent design" argument (as opposed to "evolution"), and I think detracts from what makes it good. What makes more sense to me is HTTP1/1.1 was invented and then we hacked/adapted/"evolved" on top of it to get it to do what we want. It wasn't the spec that was genius - it was the effort of countless engineers overtime the crammed a genius, trillion dollar industry into an "okay" spec (The same way it was done for HTML/CSS/JS). in that vein, the whole binary/plaintext header arguments seem a lot closer to "this is the way my father did it" rather than "this is the most efficient way". To counter your XML/JSON example - I would argue they won over binary formats because there a huge need for humans to write & edit data exchange structures. OTOH, I can't remember the last time I sent/edited/created HTTP Headers by hand. While JSON has tons of uses and is stored in countless places(config, user data, state data), HTTP servers are the only services that seem to care about HTTP headers.

XorNot 12y ago
And moreover, the new push is towards protocols which seamlessly turn JSON into binary and back again. Which is a very good way to do things, it's just so rare that anyone ever bothers to maintain and standardize both sides of something.

deleted 12y ago

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