I had a similar feeling making an SNMP MIB processor around the same time (2000?) -- the ASN.1 libraries so complicated. So I wrote my own, which turned out sim

I had a similar feeling making an SNMP MIB processor around the same time (2000?) -- the ASN.1 libraries so complicated. So I wrote my own, which turned out simple and symmetrical just by encoding from back to front instead of the messy front-to-back-and-backpatch everyone else was doing. (And I guess by leaving some things out that we didn't use, like other encoding rules? I don't remember.) When those vulnerabilities hit I never found out how that code did -- I wish they'd open-sourced it as they'd planned. So, that particular part (DER? again I forget) seemed tolerable to me. The newer stuff like Cap'n Proto is probably still better.