[jpgvm]

Anything is deceptively deep if you understanding never goes beyond skin deep.

Also Avro is great but like Kafka you were probably holding it wrong.

I do prefer Protobuf in these particular scenarios as Protobufs features more closely align with svc <-> svc RPC style communication patterns while Avro shines in longer lived scenarios where messages need to be archived and you don't want to come up with your own framing for your Protobufs.

This is because Avro has the Avro Object Container Format which is a simple block based file format, which allows for relatively efficient seeking, block based compression etc. Protobuf unfortunately doesn't define any standard file formats or even wire protocol framing. If you need to do more than simply store and scan/read in bulk you might want to use Parquet instead though.

Reading this blog post was probably a waste of my time, hopefully this comment actually helps someone though.

[safetytrick]

I'm a big Avro fan, it isn't easy to be good at but if you follow its rules it is so much easier to evolve than plain json is.