[erlang-questions] fyi: Google protocol buffers

[Ben Hood]

2008/7/9 Torben Hoffmann <torben.lehoff@REDACTED>:
> Anyway, I read through the documentation they have on this and it seems like
> it is a re-invention of ASN.1 when it comes to encoding and decoding of the
> messages you define the .proto files.

I agree with this view, but would like to point out that whilst Erlang
has the luxury of having a good quality standards compliant open
source implementation of ASN.1, this is not necessarily the case for
lots of other languages, which is precisely the point of using a
message protocol. So if you want to use encode/decode ASN.1 in a
different language, you might have to pay for the toolkit or there
might not be a toolkit at all.

One advantage that PB may have is the google hype, meaning that it
might gather enough momentum for people to be implementing PB in lots
of different languages which of course increases the usefulness of the
protocol.

I am considering writing a implementation for Erlang, but don't want
to duplicate any efforts from anybody else....so is anybody writing
one or thinking about writing one?

Ben