Developers should read protocols

Protocols are at the heart of software development. Beneath your frameworks lie copious rules that define the behavior of the application. As a developer, I strongly recommend reading a protocol end-to-end. While not required to work in the field, this practice has helped me appreciate the thought put behind technology that makes the internet.

Reading a protocol gives you the view of why certain design decisions were taken and what trade offs were considered. For example, reading the JSON-RPC protocol you would come to know why the id member of the response object cannot be a fraction since many fractions don’t have exact representation in binary format. You will also come to know what documenting a system entails, for example what does an interaction look like (request/response) and what errors are raised if something goes wrong etc.

One issue regarding protocols is that they can be verbose (HTTP protocol is 177 pages !). Now if reading is not your thing worry not ! You can start with JSON-RPC, a tiny yet well-defined protocol that serves as an excellent introduction to understanding how these fundamental building blocks of software are structured and documented.