I am setting up multiple servers for a social networking app and have never worked with HTTP before. Is there advantages of using HTTP instead of creating your own protocol for TCP streams? It will be used for both normal text transfer and images/videos.
I have started up a general TCP server that can transfer both small organized text packets and also larger image/video streams but I'm unsure if it will be as scalable/efficient/secure as using HTTP/s. I'm not going to post the code as I hope this question is general enough to not require it and I am not looking for code analysis quite yet.
The server is working for transferring data but I am not sure of the advantages/disadvantages of using HTTP instead. Do other websites that use Go for their system use HTTP or just straight sockets?
Raw TCP sockets are theoretically more performant (ignoring several external factors) than HTTP.
HTTP libraries are robust and well tested, and constantly updated in the face of new bugs and security threats.
So do you optimize for raw performance, or for developer time?
A few questions to ask yourself:
If this is just for your learning, go for it.