Protobufs are better but not best. Still, by far, the easiest thing to use and the safest is actual APIs. Like, in your application. Interfaces and stuff.

Obviously if your thing HAS to communicate over the network that's one thing, but a lot of applications don't. The distributed system micro service stuff is a choice.

Guys, distributed systems are hard. The extremely low API visibility combined with fragile network calls and unsafe, poorly specified API versioning means your stuff is going to break, and a lot.

Want a version controlled API? Just write in interface in C# or PHP or whatever.

> Protobufs are better but not best.

This sort of comments doesn't add anything to the discussion unless you are able to point out what you believe to be the best. It reads as an unnecessary and unsubstantiated put-down.