That kind of stuff is necessary for binary protocols to evolve in a compatible way. When a TLS 1.4 is defined, we need a window where clients and servers can still negotiate 1.3 until both have been upgraded. And 1.3 had to find ways to be compatible with 1.2, and so forth. Decades of that kind of evolution are guaranteed to leave some marks in the protocol.
But let's keep a sense of proportion. I find it hard to worry about "wasting" maybe 0.01% of the total internet bandwidth for a few extra bytes here or there, when that's necessary to keep the internet working at all, when on the other hand, for no end-user benefit, we don't hesitate to waste maybe 15% (after compression) by insisting on using text-based formats for the payload in all our web standards.
In fact, I'd love to see a back-of-the-envelope calculation of how many tons of CO2 would have been saved in total if HTML was a well-engineered binary format. (Including bandwidth, storage, parsing on the client etc.) The number must be insane.
But let's keep a sense of proportion. I find it hard to worry about "wasting" maybe 0.01% of the total internet bandwidth for a few extra bytes here or there, when that's necessary to keep the internet working at all, when on the other hand, for no end-user benefit, we don't hesitate to waste maybe 15% (after compression) by insisting on using text-based formats for the payload in all our web standards.
In fact, I'd love to see a back-of-the-envelope calculation of how many tons of CO2 would have been saved in total if HTML was a well-engineered binary format. (Including bandwidth, storage, parsing on the client etc.) The number must be insane.