Simon Willison’s Weblog

What are some resources to read when designing a new client-server application layer protocol?

9th September 2013

My answer to What are some resources to read when designing a new client-server application layer protocol? on Quora

I suggest avoiding designing a custom protocol and using Protocol Buffers, Apache Thrift or Cap’n Proto instead.

Posted 9th September 2013 at 3:21 pm · Follow me on Mastodon, Bluesky, Twitter or subscribe to my newsletter

More recent articles

What happens if AI labs train for pelicans riding bicycles? - 13th November 2025
Reverse engineering Codex CLI to get GPT-5-Codex-Mini to draw me a pelican - 9th November 2025
Video + notes on upgrading a Datasette plugin for the latest 1.0 alpha, with help from uv and OpenAI Codex CLI - 6th November 2025

This is What are some resources to read when designing a new client-server application layer protocol? by Simon Willison, posted on 9th September 2013.

programming 156 quora 1005

Next: Which tools top technology companies use to create complex web pages e.g Amazon Home Page, Facebook etc? Do they create it manually or use some tool like Dreamweaver ?

Previous: What is the best way to choose between two equally feasible start-up ideas?

Monthly briefing

Sponsor me for $10/month and get a curated email digest of the month's most important LLM developments.

Pay me to send you less!

Sponsor & subscribe