Yeah, let's pretend that type algebra doesn't exist, and even if it does exist then it's not useful and definitely isn't practical in data protocols. Let's believe that the authors of protobuf considered everything, and since they aren't amateurs (by the virtue of having worked on protobuf at Google, presumably), every elaborated opinion that draws them as amateurs at applying type algebra in data protocol designs is a personal ad-hominem attack.
They're not amateurs by virtue of being some of the most senior engineers ever to work at Google. You don't get to play the "ad hominem" card while calling them names. This whole thread is embarrassing.
Ok, "some of the most senior engineers ever to work at Google" don't seem to know that static bounds checking don't require dependent types: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45150008
> You don't get to play the "ad hominem" card while calling them names
The entire article explains it at length why there's the impression, it's not ad-hominem.
Previous threads on this story have spelled out specifically which Googlers were behind this design, and, again, it's embarrassing that anybody is trying to defend the hill of "protobuf's designers were amateurs". You can keep digging in if you want.
IMO it's a pretty reasonable claim about experience level, not intelligence, and isn't at all an ad hominem attack because it's referring directly to the fundamental design choices of protocol buffers and thus is not at all a fallacy of irrelevance.
Whatever else Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat are, and whatever mistakes they made in designing protobufs, they are not amateurs.
Not long after they designed and implemented protobuffers, they shared the ACM prize in computing, as well as many other similar honors. And the honors keep stacking up.
None of this means that protobufs are perfect (or even good), but it does mean they weren't amateurs when they did it.
