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Comment by _halgari | Hacker News Reader

Protobuf - static schema, non self describing Avro - not self describing MsgPack - limited data types (no URLs, Dates, etc) etc.

Go find a format that offers everything transit does, and when you don't find a perfect match for all the goals, you'll understand why this library was created.

Cross-platform (without writing in C), self describing, schema-less, extensible, support for caching, etc.

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Avro is self describing [1]. It embeds the schema of whatever it is describing inside the format so a reader can handle arbitrary avro serialized files. It is also cross platform. I'm not sure if avro maps can cache keys, but if you use a record type the keys are not stored in the data. As far as I know though, avro cannot handle custom types, so those will need customized importers and exporters.

[1]: http://avro.apache.org/docs/current/

Why is self-description a necessity here?

Gotta differentiate it from the other stuff somehow.

That is a pretty potshot statement. Please read the objectives section: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-documenting

"minimize the effort required to maintain or extend legacy systems" and "reduce the need for users and developers of a system to consult secondary documentation sources" are fitting here.

JSON does all the things Transit does, with fewer types. (And less stupidity)

Should rename it to Enterprise JSON, because it's JSON with more complexity for those architects who don't realize you can easily store a date as a int, or a URL as a string. (Or cache ANY document)

Seriously... why does a document format need support for caching? It would seem to me that a document format should be agnostic to whether it has been cached or not.

Also, why does a document care what language writes it? I don't understand how a document couldn't be cross platform, like maybe if you're using 36-bit words or some fuckery, but most people these days store documents using 8 bit words. Does anyone seriously have issues with JSON on a PDP-10?

> JSON does all the things Transit does, with fewer types. (And less stupidity)

I really hate comments like this.

These guys took the time to show the world this thing they created to fill a need they had, and this comment takes a dump on it without its author first getting any experience using the system. As though the author understands Transit's purpose better than Transit's authors do.

Hey, I get it: Transit /does/ (at first glance) seem largely redundant with all the other serialization libraries out there. But before we assume that its authors spent all this time on their project because they're "stupid", it behooves us to try to understand their motivations.

In the end they're not hurting anyone by releasing this thing they built. If it's bad, you don't have to use it. There's no need to be mean or get upset.

I'm not upset, I'm fine with other people using it. I still think the format is stupid. For the same reasons I think XML is stupid, and no I don't have to use XML, nor do I.

Also, my comment isn't hurting anyone, if you don't like it you don't have to read it, there's no reason to hate :)

No where in my post did I say Rich Hickey is stupid, he has some very great ideas I just don't think this is one of them.

Your comment is hurting people. It hurts the developers, based on at best subjective and at worst ignorant evidence. And it lowers the quality of discussion because people end up having to address your culturally poor behavior rather than the topic at hand.

Being mindful isn't hard.

> if you don't like it you don't have to read it How do we know we don't like it until we've read it?

I upvoted your comment because you make some valid points, e.g. caching should be kept orthogonal to the document format, which needs to be kept simple above almost all else.

I upvoted only after some hesitation, though, because of the unnecessary snark about stupidity. I think that's what you were downvoted for.

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