CBOR vs. MessagePack: A Contentious Serialization Showdown

The author grapples with choosing between MessagePack and CBOR for a shared programming language, prioritizing performance and ease of understanding. While MessagePack boasts a cooler, simpler interface, CBOR demonstrates significantly faster encoding/decoding speeds (approximately 200% faster in benchmarks). Despite CBOR's more complex documentation, its superior design ultimately wins out. The author chooses CBOR but acknowledges the political baggage influencing their decision.