Protocol Buffers
Protocol Buffers (protobuf) is a language-neutral, platform-neutral extensible mechanism for serializing structured data, developed by Google. It uses a simple interface definition language (IDL) to define data structures, which are then compiled into code for various programming languages to efficiently serialize and deserialize data. It is commonly used for communication protocols, data storage, and configuration files due to its compact binary format and fast processing.
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. 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.