Why use the text format?

During the primer on serialization, we said that the main reason for using Protobuf is that it reduces the payload by serializing to binary. But remember that we also said that the very binary that saves us a lot of bandwidth can cost us in terms of readability. This is because it would take way more human effort to read the binary than to read the text directly.

To solve this problem, Protobuf can also serialize data to text. It can serialize data to JSON, for example, but for this book, the most interesting text format that it can serialize to is its own text format. There are several advantages to this text format, but let us first describe what the use cases are for having a text representation of your data.

The most obvious use case is for debugging. This is a stressful and not-so-enjoyable part of our job. We do not want to add extra complexity on top of the already complex process. As such, we try to make each payload clear by making them readable...