| Binary protocols are usually far easier to implement both sending and receiving. There is far less ambiguity. In fact, the newline problem I mentioned? It was not easier to diagnose, and was only caught by using tools checking it as a binary structure. Postel was just flat wrong, and history shows us this is so. JSON is popular because it was automatically available in JavaScript, and people dislike the bit if extra verbosity XML introduces. JSON is also a much tighter format than the text parsing the IETF usually implements. Postel's law also goes against the idea of failing fast. Instead, you end up thinking you're compliant, because implementations just happen to interpret your mistake in the right way. Then one day something changes and bam, it all comes crashing down. Ask any experienced web developer the weird edge cases they have to deal with, again from Postel's law. And anyways, you know what everyone uses when debugging the wire? WireShark or something similar. Problem solved. Same for things like JSON. Over the past months I've been dealing with that a lot. Every time I have an issue, I pull out a tool to figure it out. Do you know the real reason for the text looseness? It's a holdover from the '60s. The Header: Value format was just a slight codification of what people were already doing. And why? Because they wanted a format that was primary written and readby humans, with a bit if structure thrown in. Loose syntax is great in such cases. Modern protocols are not written and rarely read by humans. So it's just a waste of electricity and developer time. |