I was interviewed on episode 256 of the Go Time
podcast! We talked about Protocol Buffers,
gRPC, and some common misconceptions about both. I tried to emphasize that:
Protobuf and gRPC are useful because they reduce developer toil. Any
performance improvements are nice, but they’re secondary.
Protobuf isn’t just for binary data — it works just as well with JSON.
gRPC is a simple, HTTP-based protocol. Google’s gRPC implementations optimize
for Google’s problems, but there’s plenty room for gRPC implementations that
work better for most Gophers.
Overall, I found it surprisingly hard to stay on track during the discussion.
I have so much more respect for previous Go Time guests!