Top all-time · #1096
Buf
Company blog · buf.build/blogprogrammingweb
Buf is the company blog at buf.build, writing about programming and web. Since 2019, 63 different Hacker News readers have linked it 106 times, most often “Buf – A new way of working with Protocol Buffers”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-26, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 3 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
Buf is a Protobuf tooling company. HN readers link its blog and docs as references for Protobuf, gRPC, Connect and Bufstream topics. Most comments cite pages as sources or point to its tools.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Buf is the toolchain for Protobuf, gRPC, and ConnectRPC - lint and generate code with the Buf CLI, publish and govern schemas on the Buf Schema Registry.
Most-linked posts?
- /6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2022-09-12
- Buf – A new way of working with Protocol Buffers3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-06-16
- Connect-Web: TypeScript library for calling RPC servers from web browsers3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-08-04
- Protobuf-ES: Protocol Buffers TypeScript/JavaScript runtime3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-10-28
- Bufstream: Kafka at 10x Lower Cost3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-07-09
- Protobuf Editions are here: don't panic2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-05-09
- Hyperpb: Faster dynamic Protobuf parsing2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-07-18
- Connect: A Better gRPC2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-06-01
- Oneofs are a disaster. Protovalidate has fixed them2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-06-13
- API design is stuck in the past2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-11-13
What Hacker News says?
Buf | Software Engineer, Engineering Manager | Remote (US or Canada) | Full time | https://buf.build Buf is building a new paradigm for APIs. Our open source and commercial software helps companies adopt Protobuf schemas throughout their stack, from gRPC APIs to streaming data in Kafka. We’re deployed everywhere from small startups to the world’s largest enterprises, and we’re hiring to scale our growing business. T…
Comment linking /careers
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2024)”Submitted Connect: A Better gRPC as a story · 308 points
HN discussionBuf | Software Engineer (Frontend or Infrastructure) | Remote (US or Canada) | Full time | https://buf.build/ Buf is building a Protobuf platform that provides end-to-end type safety and governance across all APIs and streaming data in Kafka. We’re deployed everywhere from small startups to the world’s largest enterprises, and we’re hiring to scale our growing business. Tech stack: Go, TypeScript, Kubernetes If you…
Comment linking /careers
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2024)”Submitted Connect-Web: TypeScript library for calling RPC servers from web browsers as a story · 221 points
HN discussionBuf | Software Engineer (Infrastructure, Go backend), Engineering Manager (Infrastructure) | Remote (US or Canada) | Full time | https://buf.build/ Buf is building a Protobuf platform that provides end-to-end type safety and governance across all APIs and streaming data in Kafka. We’re deployed everywhere from small startups to the world’s largest enterprises, and we’re hiring to scale our growing business. Tech sta…
Comment linking /careers
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2024)”Submitted Protobuf-ES: Protocol Buffers TypeScript/JavaScript runtime as a story · 205 points
HN discussionI have had a really good experience with https://connectrpc.com/ so far. Buf is doing some interesting things in this space https://buf.build/docs/ecosystem/
Comment linking /docs/ecosystem/
on “Understanding gRPC, OpenAPI and REST and when to use them in API design (2020)”Submitted The Protobuf Language Specification as a story · 194 points
HN discussionHave you tried the buf.build tools? Especially the remote code generation and package generation may make life easier for you. a couple of links https://buf.build/protocolbuffers/java?version=v29.3 https://buf.build/docs/bsr/generated-sdks/maven
Comment linking /docs/bsr/generated-sdks/maven
on “Understanding gRPC, OpenAPI and REST and when to use them in API design (2020)”Submitted API design is stuck in the past as a story · 146 points
HN discussionI've been having fun with connectrpc https://connectrpc.com/ It fixes a lot of the problematic stuff with grpc and I'm excited for webtransport to finally be accepted by safari so connectrpc can develop better streaming. I initially thought https://buf.build was overkill, but the killer feature was being able to import 3rd party proto files without having to download them individually: deps: - buf.build/landeed/prot…
Comment linking /
on “Understanding gRPC, OpenAPI and REST and when to use them in API design (2020)”Submitted Hyperpb: Faster dynamic Protobuf parsing as a story · 76 points
HN discussionThe official grpc JavaScript implementation is sort of bad. The one by buf.build is good from what I've seen. https://buf.build/blog/protobuf-es-the-protocol-buffers-type...
Comment linking /blog/protobuf-es-the-protocol-buffers-typescript-javascript-runtime-we-all-deserve
on “Understanding gRPC, OpenAPI and REST and when to use them in API design (2020)”Submitted The Buf CLI, an all-in-one tool for Protobuf development, has reached v1.0 as a story · 63 points
HN discussionBuf CLI itself is licensed under a permissive Apache 2.0 License [0]. Since Buf is a compiler, its output cannot be copyrighted (similar to proprietary or GPL licensed compilers). DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer. Buf distinguishes a few types of plugins: the most important being local and remote. Local plugins are executables installed on your own machine, and Buf places no restrictions on use of those. Remote plugins…
Comment linking /pricing
on “Go Protobuf: The New Opaque API”Submitted Buf raises $93M to deprecate REST/JSON as a story · 56 points
HN discussionWhen I was at Google around 2016, there was a significant push to convince folks that the proto3 implicit presence was superior to explicit presence. Is there a design doc with the rationale for switching back to explicit presence for Edition 2023? The closest docs I've found are https://buf.build/blog/protobuf-editions-are-here and https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/tree/main/docs/d... .
Comment linking /blog/protobuf-editions-are-here
on “Go Protobuf: The New Opaque API”Submitted Protobuf Editions are here: don't panic as a story · 31 points
HN discussionThe other clouds have fees like this too. Even if this were to change, using object storage results in a lot of operational simplicity as well compared to managing a bunch of disks. You can easily and quickly scale to zero or scale up to handle bursts in traffic. An architecture like this also makes it possible to achieve a truly active-active multi-region Kafka cluster that has real SLAs. See: https://buf.build/blo…
Comment linking /blog/bufstream-multi-region
on “What If We Could Rebuild Kafka from Scratch?”Submitted Connect joins the CNCF: gRPC you can bet your business on as a story · 18 points
HN discussionSide-ish note, I really enjoyed a submission on Bufstream recently, a Kafka mq replacement. One of the things they mentioned is that they are working on building in Iceberg materialization, so Bufstream can automatically handle building a big analytics data lake out of incoming data. It feels like that could potentially tackle a bunch of the stack here. https://buf.build/blog/bufstream-kafka-lower-cost https://news.…
Comment linking /blog/bufstream-kafka-lower-cost
on “Building and scaling Notion's data lake”Submitted Buf Studio: Interact with gRPC and Protobuf APIs Directly from the Browser as a story · 17 points
HN discussionI'm surprised the author doesn't mention ConnectRPC: https://connectrpc.com/ It solves ALL the problems of vanilla gRPC, and it even is compatible with the gRPC clients! It grew out of Twirp protocol, which I liked so much I made a C++ implementation: https://github.com/Cyberax/twirp-cpp But ConnectRPC guys went further, and they built a complete infrastructure for RPC. Including a package manager (buf.build), integ…
Comment linking /bufbuild/protovalidate
on “gRPC: The Bad Parts”Submitted Bufstream: Kafka at 10x Lower Cost as a story · 15 points
HN discussionhttps://buf.build/ is this, no?
Comment linking /
on “gRPC: The Bad Parts”Submitted The Buf Schema Registry, a dependency management system for Protocol Buffers as a story · 11 points
HN discussionI’m looking at the product page [0] and wondering how those two statements are compatible: > Bufstream runs fully within your AWS or GCP VPC, giving you complete control over your data, metadata, and uptime. Unlike the alternatives, Bufstream never phones home. > Bufstream pricing is simple: just $0.002 per uncompressed GiB written (about $2 per TiB). We don't charge any per-core, per-agent, or per-call fees. Surely…
Comment linking /product/bufstream
on “Jepsen: Bufstream 0.1”Submitted Buf – A new way of working with protobufs as a story · 9 points
HN discussionAnd there’s Buf Studio :-) https://buf.build/blog/buf-studio https://studio.buf.build
Comment linking /blog/buf-studio
on “Connect-Web: TypeScript library for calling RPC servers from web browsers”Submitted Protobuf-ES: The Protocol Buffers TypeScript/JavaScript runtime we all deserve as a story · 5 points
HN discussion
