go-concise-encoding VS Pion WebRTC

I'm not sure, TBH... Maybe I'm just a glutton for punishment?

I'm currently partway through refactoring all of the portable unit tests for Concise Encoding ( https://github.com/kstenerud/go-concise-encoding/tree/master... ) and it is a SLOG! I mean, so goddamn boring and tedious that I wanna stick an ice pick through my skull. There's easily another 200 hours of this terrible work ahead and I'll be right back to it the moment Dogma v1 is published in a few weeks (Dogma has been kind of a vacation from it in a lot of ways).

Do I dread it? Yes. Am I still going to do it? Yes. Because at the end of the day I want to be able to stand back and say "I made that. I completed it - ALL of it. It's not perfect, but it's doing its job and people are using it."

It's still in the prerelease stage, but v1 will be released later this year. I'm mostly getting hits from China since they tend to be a lot more worried about security. I expect the rest of the world to catch on to the gaping security holes of JSON and friends in the next few years as the more sophisticated actors start taking advantage of them. For example https://github.com/kstenerud/concise-encoding/blob/master/ce...

There are still a few things to do:

- Update enctool (https://github.com/kstenerud/enctool) to integrate https://cuelang.org so that there's at least a command line schema validator for CE.

- Update the grammar file (https://github.com/kstenerud/concise-encoding/tree/master/an...) because it's a bit out of date.

- Revamp the compliance tests to be themselves written in Concise Encoding (for example https://github.com/kstenerud/go-concise-encoding/blob/master... but I'll be simplifying the format some more). That way, we can run the same tests on all CE implementations instead of everyone coming up with their own. I'll move the test definitions to their own repo when they're done and then you can just submodule it.

I'm thinking that they should look more like:

    c1

I'll be working on the reference implementation [1] of Concise Encoding [2], which is a secure data format for the modern world. My aim is to replace insecure and clunky formats like JSON and XML and the various binary formats that do similar things less conveniently.

In a nutshell:

- Existing ad-hoc formats are too loosely defined to be secure, and that's becoming a huge problem as the bad guys become more sophisticated. CE is tightly specified and designed to mitigate exploitation of codecs.

- CE is a twin text and binary format. Humans view and edit in text, and machines send it in binary, so you get the convenience of text and the efficiency of binary for free.

- CE supports the fundamental types natively. Stringifying is buggy, causes incompatibilities, and opens security holes. And it's completely unnecessary with a properly designed data format.

[1] https://github.com/kstenerud/go-concise-encoding

[2] https://concise-encoding.org/

I'm building a general-purpose data format for the modern age. The old ones are too bulky, too insecure, and too limiting.

* Secure: As a tightly specified format, Concise Encoding doesn't suffer from the security problems that the more loosely defined formats do. Everything is done one way only, leaving less of an attack surface.

* Efficient: As a twin binary/text format, Concise Encoding retains the text-based ease-of-use of the old text formats, but is stored and transmitted in the simpler and smaller binary form, making it more secure, easier on the energy bill, and easier on the planet.

* Versatile: Supports all common types natively. 90% of users won't need any form of customization.

* Future-proof: As a versioned format, Concise Encoding can respond to a changing world without degenerating into deprecations and awkward encodings or painting itself into a corner.

* Plug and play: No extra compilation steps or special description formats or crazy boilerplate.

https://concise-encoding.org

Reference implementation (golang): https://github.com/kstenerud/go-concise-encoding

One thing golang did right is the go playground. When I put code in my README, I also include a playground link.

Example: https://github.com/kstenerud/go-concise-encoding#library-usa...

I could use some help if you're interested in implementing an ad-hoc data format codec in different languages.

https://concise-encoding.org is nearing release, but building the reference implementation (https://github.com/kstenerud/go-concise-encoding) has taken so much of my spare time that I couldn't even think about other languages (especially since I'll need to focus on the schema format next, and the proto-RPC protocol after that).

I've started doing this in my larger projects e.g. https://github.com/kstenerud/go-concise-encoding/blob/master...

An architecture document should be the code equivalent of a combined street map and tourist guide. Its purpose is to bring strangers up to a minimum level of familiarity with the code as quickly as possible. That includes where things are, why it was architected this way, things to look out for, and a few interesting points of weirdness perhaps.

Concise Encoding: https://concise-encoding.org

The friendly data format for human and machine. Think JSON, but with 1:1 compatible twin binary and text formats and rich type support.

* Edit text, transmit binary. Humans love text. Machines love binary. With Concise Encoding, conversion is 1:1 and seamless.

* Rich type support. Boolean, integer, float, string, bytes, time, URI, UUID, list, map, markup, metadata, etc.

* Plug and play. No schema needed. No special syntax files. No code generation. Just import and go.

I'm in the process of finishing up the reference implementation (https://github.com/kstenerud/go-concise-encoding), after which I'll start on the schema specification. Once that's done, I have a low-level communication protocol that will use this format under the hood.

I am really excited about https://github.com/sepfy/libpeer. It has examples ready for ESP32 etc....

When working on KVS I wasn't familiar with the embedded space at all. I saw 'heavyweight' embedded where you were running on Linux. Then you had RTOS/No OS at all. I wasn't prepared for these devices at all. If we can make WebRTC work in the embedded space I think it will really accelerate what developers are able to build!

Remotely driven cars, security cameras, robots in hospitals that bring iPads to infectious patients etc... Creative people are building amazing things. The WebRTC/video space needs to work harder and support them :)

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I love how diverse the WebRTC space is now. Outside of this implementation you have plenty of other options!

* https://github.com/shinyoshiaki/werift-webrtc (Typescript)

* https://github.com/pion/webrtc (Golang)

* https://github.com/webrtc-rs/webrtc (Rust)

* https://github.com/algesten/str0m (Rust)

* hhttps://github.com/sepfy/libpeer (C/Embedded)

* https://webrtc.googlesource.com/src/ (C++)

* https://github.com/sipsorcery-org/sipsorcery (C#)

* https://github.com/paullouisageneau/libdatachannel (C++)

* https://github.com/elixir-webrtc (Elixir)

* https://github.com/aiortc/aiortc (Python)

* GStreamer’s webrtcbin (C)

See https://github.com/sipsorcery/webrtc-echoes for examples of some running against each other.

I have worked four jobs related to https://github.com/pion/webrtc and one for https://webrtcforthecurious.com

Two companies used Pion. The other two were just using the protocol (WebRTC)

In my experience Go has been relatively approachable for people that are good at PHP. It has a great standard library and a pretty solid ecosystem, though frameworks aren’t as popular in Go. There are some well regarded libraries for things like WebRTC via https://github.com/pion/webrtc WebSicket via https://github.com/nhooyr/websocket

Don't try to make RTC yourself, it looks easy, but in fact, it's a really hard problem to solve. Use https://pion.ly/ it's a pretty solid package they also have a discord/slack channel with a lot of helpful people there.

Maybe you can reuse some of this code: https://github.com/pion/webrtc/blob/master/examples/data-channels/main.go