The field prefix byte in Protobuf doesn't really encode "tag and type" as stated in the article, it encodes tag and size (whether the field is fixed 64bit, fixed 32bit, varint, or variable size)
This is pretty self evident when you look at how submessages are encoded the same way as strings, both are just arbitrary variable length blobs.
You cannot reliable determine from a Protobuf message whether a field is an integer, a double, a bool, or an enum without the schema.
Protobufs is a TLV format that just happens to have a compact binary encoding.
The field prefix byte in Protobuf doesn't really encode "tag and type" as stated in the article, it encodes tag and size (whether the field is fixed 64bit, fixed 32bit, varint, or variable size)
This is pretty self evident when you look at how submessages are encoded the same way as strings, both are just arbitrary variable length blobs.
You cannot reliable determine from a Protobuf message whether a field is an integer, a double, a bool, or an enum without the schema.
Protobufs is a TLV format that just happens to have a compact binary encoding.