Thrift
Thrift is an open-source, cross-language remote procedure call (RPC) framework developed by Apache. It enables efficient communication between services written in different programming languages by defining data types and service interfaces in a language-neutral interface definition language (IDL), then generating code for clients and servers. It handles serialization, transport, and protocol layers to facilitate scalable, high-performance distributed systems.
Developers should learn Thrift when building polyglot microservices or distributed systems that require interoperability between services in languages like Java, Python, C++, or Go, as it simplifies cross-language communication with minimal overhead. It's particularly useful in large-scale environments like those at Facebook (where it originated) or other tech companies needing efficient data serialization and RPC, such as for backend services, data processing pipelines, or IoT applications.