Custom Binary Formats vs Protocol Buffers

Developers should learn and use custom binary formats when working on performance-critical applications where data size, parsing speed, or memory usage are paramount, such as in real-time systems, high-frequency trading, or video game asset pipelines meets developers should learn protocol buffers when building distributed systems, microservices, or applications requiring efficient data exchange, as it offers better performance and smaller payloads compared to text-based formats like json or xml. Here's our take.

Custom Binary Formats

Nice Pick

Developers should learn and use custom binary formats when working on performance-critical applications where data size, parsing speed, or memory usage are paramount, such as in real-time systems, high-frequency trading, or video game asset pipelines

Pros

• They are also essential for legacy system maintenance, proprietary software development, or when standard formats lack necessary features like compactness or type safety
• Related to: data-serialization, low-level-programming

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

Protocol Buffers

Developers should learn Protocol Buffers when building distributed systems, microservices, or applications requiring efficient data exchange, as it offers better performance and smaller payloads compared to text-based formats like JSON or XML

Pros

• It is particularly useful in high-performance scenarios such as gRPC-based APIs, real-time data processing, or when interoperability between multiple programming languages is needed, as it generates type-safe code from a single schema definition
• Related to: grpc, serialization

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

The Verdict

These tools serve different purposes. Custom Binary Formats is a concept while Protocol Buffers is a tool. We picked Custom Binary Formats based on overall popularity, but your choice depends on what you're building.

The Bottom Line

Custom Binary Formats wins

Based on overall popularity. Custom Binary Formats is more widely used, but Protocol Buffers excels in its own space.