[marvin-hansen]

I had my fair share of frustration with proto as well. I appreciate in Skir

GH style import. This is a big one I wish proto had in the first place. The entire idea of a proto registry feels reactive to me when, ideally, you want to pull in a versioned shared file to import that is verified by the compiler long before serve or client verifies the payload schema.

Schema validation and compatibility checks on CI. Again a big one and critical to catch issues early.

Enums done right... No further comment required.

I think with some more attention to details e.g. hammering out the gaps some other comments have identified and more language support e.g. Rust, Go, C# this can actually work out over time.

Here is an idea to contemplate as a side gig with your favorite Ai assistant: A tool to convert proto to Skir. Or at least as much as possible. As someone who had to maintain larger and complex proto files, a lot of proto specific pain points are addressed.

The only concern i have is timing. Ten years ago this would have been a smash hit. These days, we have Thrift and similar meaning the bar is definitely higher. That's not necessarily bad, but one needs to be mindful about differentiation to the existing proto alternatives.

I hope this project gains trajectory and community especially from the frustrated proto folks.

[gepheum]

Hey, thanks a lot for the comment! I share your frustration with protobuf: although I think it's great, it carries a few design flaws which are hard to fix at this point and they create pain points which are not going away.

I completely agree with you about timing, wish I had done this 10 years ago :)

"Here is an idea to contemplate as a side gig with your favorite Ai assistant: A tool to convert proto to Skir. Or at least as much as possible. As someone who had to maintain larger and complex proto files, a lot of proto specific pain points are addressed." < I tried asking Claude: "Migrate this project from protobuf to Skir, see https://skir.build/" and it works pretty well. I created http://skir.build/llms.txt which helps with this. The pain point is data migration though, and as much as I want Skir to succeed: I cannot recommend people migrating from protobuf to Skir if they have some persisted data to migrate, the effort is probably not worth it.