I tried Protobuf after 17 years of ignoring it

A developer attempts to use Protocol Buffers for the first time after 17 years of awareness, encountering significant complexity in compilation, linking, and dependency management. The session reveals extensive build challenges including missing runtime libraries, dependency on Abseil, version mismatches, and linking errors. Despite spending over an hour, the developer struggles to compile a simple "hello world" example without using Google's Bazel build system, exposing the library's steep learning curve and infrastructure requirements.