[rkv]

After integrating protobufs in my application for messaging I decided to use a separate schema for storing the current state of the program. Ie. When state changes, the protobuf is updated and written to disk. When the program restarts, the state file is loaded into memory. I have not run into any problems doing this.

Edit: Your question is addressed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14249367

[na_ka_na]

Thanks, but I don't follow how that comment addresses my question. Is it that cost of constructing Cap'n Proto / Protobuf is quite a bit higher than constructing objects defined natively?

[kentonv]

> Is it that cost of constructing Cap'n Proto / Protobuf is quite a bit higher than constructing objects defined natively?

I discussed in more detail in reply to your first post, but just to be really clear on this:

No. In fact, for deeply-nested object trees, constructing a Cap'n Proto object can often be cheaper than a typical native object since it does less memory allocation. However, there are some limitations -- see my other reply.

(Constructing Protobuf objects, meanwhile, will usually be pretty much identical to POCS, since that's essentially what Protobuf objects are.)

There is a common myth that Cap'n Proto "just moves the serialization work to object-build time", but ultimately does the same amount of work. This is not true: Although you could describe Cap'n Proto as "doing the serialization at object build time", the work involved is not significantly different from building a regular in-memory object.