For some reason this hadn't occurred to me before, but I guess that basically every messaging and chat platform nowadays is just a HTTP or WebSocket API? Instead of a custom protocol?
@lnl Yep, that's pretty much how I looped around to "huh. I guess custom protocols are dead" - the fact that everything seems to have a web-based version now
@joepie91@social.pixie.town I'm guessing that the 'Matrix over CoAP w/ CBOR' isn't quite what you mean since it's still at a higher level than the 'transport layer' ? I know that was a demo MSC that hasn't actually entirely panned out (something about needing funding to continue working on it?), but it seems to kinda fit the bill to me otherwise.
@red_sky I mean, I'm sure there are still some things with a custom protocol for some circumstances, but in practice everything (Matrix but also proprietary chat things) is addressable over HTTP now without weird reverse engineering nonsense like used to be necessary for stuff like the MDN protocol
@joepie91 add WebRTC to the list, and i think the most important reason is that the web is just the main way of making apps now. desktop apps are web browsers, too, just with a preloaded app and extra APIs available. and if you need to make APIs work for the web, why bother maintaining multiple?