Re: Strict 'struct' pattern

[Joshua Haberman <joshua@...>]

steve donovan <steve.j.donovan <at> gmail.com> writes:

> 
> On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 10:16 PM, Joshua Haberman<joshua <at> reverberate.org> 
wrote:
> 1 > - instances of Alice have a more efficient representation in memory.
> 
> 2 > - since "x" and "y" are strongly typed, we can throw an error
> 
> 3 > - you get a very efficient, backward compatible, language-independent
> >  serialization format for free (protocol buffers).
> 
> This is a good combination of features, especially if you did need to
> interoperate with other languages.

I am really glad you think so.

> (Protocol buffers are a lot
> simpler than all that IDL that gave me a headache last year, and using
> XML has always seemed slightly insane)

Yes.  I think XML has the unfortunate combination of being completely
wrong for this problem space but *appearing* to be a reasonable solution.

I agree that protocol buffers are a much better solution, which is one
reason that I'm spending so much effort on this project.  And by the
way, if you're not aware protobufs have a text format also!

> And, nice for RPC.
> 
> Does it require the Google proto compiler?

Nope!  When you are working in a dynamic language like Lua, no
compile step will be necessary -- you'll (eventually) be able
to load .proto files directly.  You'll be able to include them
as easily as you can include Lua source.

I do have a proto compiler (which is totally separate from the
Google compiler), but it is only required if you want static type
safety from a static language like C++ or Java.

Josh