I remember back when Protobuf and Thrift were new, there were discussions about them re-inventing the ASN.1 wheel. I'd love to hear opinions of people who have

I remember back when Protobuf and Thrift were new, there were discussions about them re-inventing the ASN.1 wheel. I'd love to hear opinions of people who have used them, and the experience they made. I've found an interesting thread [1] discussing them, and the claimed advantages for Protobuf are as follows: - faster (real existing software, not some hypothetical ASN.1 compiler that could do x) - easier to maintain backward compatibility - much simpler, and thus easier to understand and more robust Especially maintaining compatibility seems crucial to me in large distributed systems. [1] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/protobuf/eNAZlnPKVW4 https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/protobuf/eNAZlnPKVW4