Whether to adopt gRPC
My team was building a new system, where my lead developer suggested to use gRPC as the inter-service communication mechanism.
gRPC is a fine and mature technology, but within our organization, my team would be the trailblazer.
To come down to a decision, here is the pros and cons analysis.
Pros:
- opportunity for the team to learn something new
- advantage of the technology itself, including the performance (using binary over text and http/2 multiplexing)
Cons:
- Tooling support at the company
- in-house expertise
- developer ramp-up time
Personally, the tooling support is the biggest concern. Developer productivity may be ok given the seniority of the team. I don’t see the need of performance yet, especially not knowing the detail well enough. As a manager, I would vote NO.
That said, the key is if I am the right decision maker and what the guiding principal is, which is up for another discussion. Stay tuned.