I mean, cap'n'proto is written by the same person who created protobuf, so they are legit (and that somewhat jokish claim is simply that it requires no parsing).
Google loves to reinvent shit because they didn't understand it. And to get promo. In this case, ASN.1. And protobufs are so inefficient that they drive up latency and datacenter costs, so they were a step backwards. Good job, Sanjay.
Really dismissive and ignorant take from a bystander. Back it up with your delivery that does better instead of shouting with a pitchfork for no reason.
This bystander has been using protobufs for more than ten years. I'm not sure what I need to deliver since ASN.1, Cap'n Proto and Flatbuffers are all more efficient and exist already. ASN.1 was on the scene in 1984 and was already more efficient than protobufs.
Protobuf has far better ergonomics than ASN.1. ASN.1 is an overcomplicated design-by-committee mess. Backwards compatibility in particular is much harder.
I don't doubt your experience, but with X.509 having evolved substantially, and ASN.1 on billions (if not tens of billions) of devices, in practice it seems OK. And it was formally verified early.
Notably, Protobuf 2, a rewrite of Protobuf 1. Protobuf 1 was created by Sanjay Ghemawat, I believe.