Top all-time · #19662
Random codewalks
Personal blog · nilsmagnus.github.io/postprogrammingdata
Random codewalks is a personal blog at nilsmagnus.github.io about programming and data. Since 2019, 4 different Hacker News readers have linked it 4 times. The last post was in 2020, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters cite this blog's post comparing the size of JSON and protobuf payloads, including gzipped versions, when discussing protobuf and API costs. The comments use it as a source, not as a judgement of the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- /post/proto-json-sizes/3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-12-13
What Hacker News says?
The docs [0] are fairly straightforward. I'll spit out a little extra data and a few other links in case it's helpful. If this is too much or not enough text, feel free to ask followup questions. As far as data dependencies are concerned, you simply can't parse a byte till you've parsed all the preceding bytes at the same level in a message. A naive implementation would (a) varint decode at an offset, (b) extract th…
Comment linking /post/proto-json-sizes/
on “Go Protobuf: The New Opaque API”I think using HTTPS is fine. But there is probably some value in using GRPC+proto by default instead of REST+json. With client-side streaming, you set up and tear down the connection less frequently, and that means you negotiate TLS and send initial headers less frequently. And the messages themselves are smaller, especially for small messages. https://nilsmagnus.github.io/post/proto-json-sizes/ GRPC streaming is al…
Comment linking /post/proto-json-sizes/
on “Ways to reduce the costs of an HTTP(S) API on AWS”> Honestly, gzipped json is likely much smaller than uncompressed protobuf. Likely not. See here for a comparison: https://nilsmagnus.github.io/post/proto-json-sizes/ Btw, binary formats can also be compressed though it typically won't yield the same compression ratio as similar json would since there will be less repeation in the binary format.
Comment linking /post/proto-json-sizes/
on “Protobuf-ES: Protocol Buffers TypeScript/JavaScript runtime”Why should usual developers use protobuf instead of json? You are just making your life harder If using compression the size is in the same ballpark (protobuf can be between 20% and 50% smaller). For 99% of users it should not make a difference. https://nilsmagnus.github.io/post/proto-json-sizes/#gzipped-...
Comment linking /post/proto-json-sizes/
on “Protobuf-ES: Protocol Buffers TypeScript/JavaScript runtime”