[sebastos]

The choice to make 'unset' indistinguishable from 'default value' is such an absurdly boneheaded decision, and it boggles my mind that real software engineers allowed proto3 to go out that way.

I don't get what part of your link I'm supposed to be looking at as a solution to that issue? I wasn't aware of a good solution except to have careful application logic looking for sentinel values? (which is garbage)

[jsnell]

Yes, proto3 as released was garbage, but they later made it possible to get most proto2 behaviors via configuration.

Re: your question, for proto3 an field that's declared as "optional" will allow distinguishing between set to default vs. not set, while non-"optional" fields don't.

[sebastos]

Ah, ok! Yeah I think we've been working with an older version of protobuf for a while where that wasn't an option.

[moomin]

Yet still in 2024, supporting optional is off by default for some languages in protoc...