[ARandomerDude]

> It's only 77 bytes, with 29 for the header and 24 for each line. At 100,000 entries, this list would be 2.4 MB (that's ~63% less than the JSON).

If size is really the issue but you still want schema enforcement protobuf is the way to go.

[saulpw]

protobuf is terrible! Now you have to rely on Google-scale tools to generate code for whatever language(s) you want to read or write the data in, and this becomes quite the encumbrance.

[out_of_protocol]

I'd go with sqlite instead. Also, there are specialized formats like Parquet