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The first issue is that protobufs arent a standard. That inherently limits anything built on top of them to not be a standard either, and that limits their appl

The first issue is that protobufs arent a standard. That inherently limits anything built on top of them to not be a standard either, and that limits their applicability Also depending on the environment you run in, can code size bloat vs alternatives can matter

tonyarkles 3y ago
> Aren’t a standard You mean like an IETF standard? That is true, although the specification is quite simple to implement. It is certainly a de-facto standard, even if it hasn’t been standardized by the IETF or IEEE or ANSI or ECMA. > inherently limits anything built on top of them to not be a standard either I’m not sure that strictly follows. https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc9232 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc9232 for example directly references the protobuf spec at https://protobuf.dev/ https://protobuf.dev/ and includes protobufs as a valid encoding. > depending on the environment I’ve had several projects that ran on wimpy Cortex M0 processors and printf() has generally taken more code space in flash than NanoPB. This is generally with the same device doing both encoding and decoding. If you’re only encoding, the amount of code required to encode a given structure into a PB is very close to trivial. If I recall it can also be done in a streaming fashion so you don’t even need a RAM buffer necessarily to handle the encoded output. Do I love protobufs? Not really. There’s often some issue with protoc when running it in a new environment. The APIs sometimes bother me, especially the callback structure in NanoPB. But it’s been a workhorse for probably 15 years now and as a straightforward TLV encoding it works pretty darned well.
- withinboredom 3y ago
  Sounds like Stockholm Syndrome. I've work mostly with JSON/CSV/Thrift in the last 10 years, and xml/soap before that, and just recently started interacting with protobuf, so I'd disagree that it is a "de-facto standard." My largest complaint: observability. With almost literally any other protocol, if you can mitm on the wire, your human brain can parse it. You can just take a glance at it and see any issues. With grpc/pbuf ... nope. not happening. Also, I really don't like how it tries to shim data into bitmasks. Going back to debugging two systems talking to each other, I'm not a computer. Needing special tooling just to figure out what two systems are saying to each other to shave a quarter of a packet is barely worth it, if at all, IMHO.
  - FridgeSeal 3y ago
    > You can just take a glance at it and see any issues. With grpc/pbuf ... nope. not happening. Sure, but on the other hand, the number of times I’ve needed to do this, compared to JSON/string/untyped/etc systems is precisely zero. There’s just a whole lot of failure that are just non-issues with typed setups like protobufs. Protobuf still has plenty of flaws and annoying-google-isms, but not being human readable isn’t one of them IMO.
    - withinboredom 3y ago
      Nothing is preventing a system from sending you a un-deserializable message disguised as a protobuf, just like with any other encoding. In these cases, you need to diagnose the issue, no? Having something human-readable is simply straightforward. If you haven't needed to do this, perhaps you aren't working on big enough systems? I've primarily needed to do this when dealing with hundreds of millions of disparate clients, not so much on smaller systems.
      - FridgeSeal 3y ago
        > Nothing is preventing a system from sending you a un-deserializable message disguised as a protobuf, I guess it depends on where you come down on Postel’s law. If you’re an adherent, and are prepared to be flexible in what you accept, then yeah, you will have extra work on your hands. Personally, I’m not a fan of Postels law, and I’m camp “send correct data, that deserializes and upholds invariants, or get your request rejected”. I’ve played enough games with systems that weren’t strict enough about their boundaries and it’s just not worth the pain.
        withinboredom 3y ago
        When you have hundreds of millions of clients, there’s a good chance the client thinks it’s sending you the right data (especially when the customer says everything looks right on their end). You need to figure out if there is packet corruption (misbehaving switch), an outdated client, an egress load balancer screwing with packet contents, an office proxy trying to be smart, etc. This requires looking at what is going over the wire in a lot of cases. It has nothing to do with Postel’s Law, but more to telling a customer what is wrong and making your own software more resilient in the face of the world.

tonyarkles 3y ago

> Aren’t a standard You mean like an IETF standard? That is true, although the specification is quite simple to implement. It is certainly a de-facto standard, even if it hasn’t been standardized by the IETF or IEEE or ANSI or ECMA. > inherently limits anything built on top of them to not be a standard either I’m not sure that strictly follows. https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc9232 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc9232 for example directly references the protobuf spec at https://protobuf.dev/ https://protobuf.dev/ and includes protobufs as a valid encoding. > depending on the environment I’ve had several projects that ran on wimpy Cortex M0 processors and printf() has generally taken more code space in flash than NanoPB. This is generally with the same device doing both encoding and decoding. If you’re only encoding, the amount of code required to encode a given structure into a PB is very close to trivial. If I recall it can also be done in a streaming fashion so you don’t even need a RAM buffer necessarily to handle the encoded output. Do I love protobufs? Not really. There’s often some issue with protoc when running it in a new environment. The APIs sometimes bother me, especially the callback structure in NanoPB. But it’s been a workhorse for probably 15 years now and as a straightforward TLV encoding it works pretty darned well.

withinboredom 3y ago
Sounds like Stockholm Syndrome. I've work mostly with JSON/CSV/Thrift in the last 10 years, and xml/soap before that, and just recently started interacting with protobuf, so I'd disagree that it is a "de-facto standard." My largest complaint: observability. With almost literally any other protocol, if you can mitm on the wire, your human brain can parse it. You can just take a glance at it and see any issues. With grpc/pbuf ... nope. not happening. Also, I really don't like how it tries to shim data into bitmasks. Going back to debugging two systems talking to each other, I'm not a computer. Needing special tooling just to figure out what two systems are saying to each other to shave a quarter of a packet is barely worth it, if at all, IMHO.
- FridgeSeal 3y ago
  > You can just take a glance at it and see any issues. With grpc/pbuf ... nope. not happening. Sure, but on the other hand, the number of times I’ve needed to do this, compared to JSON/string/untyped/etc systems is precisely zero. There’s just a whole lot of failure that are just non-issues with typed setups like protobufs. Protobuf still has plenty of flaws and annoying-google-isms, but not being human readable isn’t one of them IMO.
  - withinboredom 3y ago
    Nothing is preventing a system from sending you a un-deserializable message disguised as a protobuf, just like with any other encoding. In these cases, you need to diagnose the issue, no? Having something human-readable is simply straightforward. If you haven't needed to do this, perhaps you aren't working on big enough systems? I've primarily needed to do this when dealing with hundreds of millions of disparate clients, not so much on smaller systems.
    - FridgeSeal 3y ago
      > Nothing is preventing a system from sending you a un-deserializable message disguised as a protobuf, I guess it depends on where you come down on Postel’s law. If you’re an adherent, and are prepared to be flexible in what you accept, then yeah, you will have extra work on your hands. Personally, I’m not a fan of Postels law, and I’m camp “send correct data, that deserializes and upholds invariants, or get your request rejected”. I’ve played enough games with systems that weren’t strict enough about their boundaries and it’s just not worth the pain.
      - withinboredom 3y ago
        When you have hundreds of millions of clients, there’s a good chance the client thinks it’s sending you the right data (especially when the customer says everything looks right on their end). You need to figure out if there is packet corruption (misbehaving switch), an outdated client, an egress load balancer screwing with packet contents, an office proxy trying to be smart, etc. This requires looking at what is going over the wire in a lot of cases. It has nothing to do with Postel’s Law, but more to telling a customer what is wrong and making your own software more resilient in the face of the world.