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A comment on Etcd, or, why modern software makes me sad. Parent comment

Re:Etcd, or, why modern software makes me sad by secondcoming on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @06:06PM (#23838585)
> I don't fully understand why etcd switched from HTTP to gRPC. It seems weird to me. I wouldn't do that for any project I run.

At a (very uneducated guess) I'd imagine that the query payloads would be smaller with gRPC since it's binary which would save money when running in the cloud for things like traffic egress, cross-zone, or cross-datacentre billing. HTTP can be unbeliveably verbose.

It's also probably quicker to deserialise which means you get more bang for your buck on your machine spend.

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Re:Etcd, or, why modern software makes me sad by pdonis on Tuesday July 14, 2020 @06:49PM (#23839050)
> At a (very uneducated guess) I'd imagine that the query payloads would be smaller with gRPC

> It's also probably quicker to deserialise

These are pretty educated guesses :-). This kind of reasoning has been behind a lot of Google initiatives, such as protocol buffers. If you're slinging enough data around, smaller payloads and faster serialization/deserialization does have a significant payoff. Once you're marinated in that mentality it probably sticks.

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