--- title: X.Org XCB Co-Creator Praises Wayland's Protocol Design description: Jamey Sharp, co-creator of the XCB library for X11, praised Wayland's protocol design after writing his first Wayland client. He wrote over 300 lines of Rust... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/x-org-xcb-co-creator-praises-wayland-s-protocol-design-cbixjwr0u twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: X.Org XCB Co-Creator Praises Wayland's Protocol Design | daily.dev og:description: Jamey Sharp, co-creator of the XCB library for X11, praised Wayland's protocol design after writing his first Wayland client. He wrote over 300 lines of Rust... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/x-org-xcb-co-creator-praises-wayland-s-protocol-design-cbixjwr0u og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/CbiXJWr0U.png og:image:alt: X.Org XCB Co-Creator Praises Wayland's Protocol Design og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # X.Org XCB Co-Creator Praises Wayland's Protocol Design **[Phoronix](https://daily.dev/sources/phoronix)** · 2 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Jamey Sharp, co-creator of the XCB library for X11, praised Wayland's protocol design after writing his first Wayland client. He wrote over 300 lines of Rust just to open a window that flashes between white and black and measures timing statistics. Sharp says Wayland is designed to make hard things possible rather than easy things easy, and that toolkits like Gtk, Qt or SDL should handle ease of use. He deliberately skipped the wayland-client crate's helper functions to experience the raw protocol, and calls Wayland's complexity tradeoff the right one. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Why does writing a basic Wayland client require so much code compared to X11 toolkits? Wayland's raw protocol is designed to make hard things possible, not to make easy things easy, according to XCB co-creator Jamey Sharp. He wrote over 300 lines of Rust just to open a window that flashes black and white and measures timing, skipping the wayland-client crate's helper functions to use the raw protocol directly. He argues ease of use belongs in higher-level toolkits like Gtk, Qt, or SDL, not the base protocol. _Weighing Wayland's low-level API against toolkit abstractions? daily.dev surfaces developer takes like this one._ ### Is Wayland's protocol design considered better than X11's by experienced X.Org developers? Yes, Jamey Sharp, who co-created the XCB library used for X11 clients, said he was 'honestly really impressed' by Wayland's protocol design after writing his first Wayland client. He said he could see the impact of every lesson Wayland's designers learned from X11 and from XCB, and called Wayland's complexity tradeoff the right one. _Tracking how veteran X11 developers assess Wayland's design? daily.dev collects firsthand takes like this._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [GitHub - J-x-Z/cocoa-way: Native macOS Wayland Compositor written in Rust using Smithay. Experience seamless Linux app streaming on macOS without XQuartz.](https://daily.dev/posts/github---j-x-z-cocoa-way-native-macos-wayland-compositor-written-in-rust-using-smithay-experience--dtohyh3ca) · Hacker News · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [Wayland Found To Be "Intrinsically Faster Than X11, But Not Necessarily More Efficient"](https://daily.dev/posts/wayland-found-to-be-intrinsically-faster-than-x11-but-not-necessarily-more-efficient--vysjac0xs) · Phoronix · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Xfce was supposed to be the last safe house for X11 holdouts, and it just started packing up](https://daily.dev/posts/xfce-was-supposed-to-be-the-last-safe-house-for-x11-holdouts-and-it-just-started-packing-up-scf5wxcgf) · XDA Developers · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [Exploring the Fragmentation of Wayland, an xdotool adventure](https://daily.dev/posts/exploring-the-fragmentation-of-wayland-an-xdotool-adventure-jtuqhvmvy) · Lobsters · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#linux](https://daily.dev/tags/linux), [#rust](https://daily.dev/tags/rust) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/x-org-xcb-co-creator-praises-wayland-s-protocol-design-cbixjwr0u) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"X.Org XCB Co-Creator Praises Wayland's Protocol Design","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/x-org-xcb-co-creator-praises-wayland-s-protocol-design-cbixjwr0u","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/x-org-xcb-co-creator-praises-wayland-s-protocol-design-cbixjwr0u"},"datePublished":"2026-10-28T12:59:00.824Z","dateModified":"2026-10-28T15:04:16.837Z","description":"Jamey Sharp, co-creator of the XCB library for X11, praised Wayland's protocol design after writing his first Wayland client. 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He wrote over 300 lines of Rust just to open a window that flashes black and white and measures timing, skipping the wayland-client crate's helper functions to use the raw protocol directly. He argues ease of use belongs in higher-level toolkits like Gtk, Qt, or SDL, not the base protocol. Weighing Wayland's low-level API against toolkit abstractions? daily.dev surfaces developer takes like this one."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"Is Wayland's protocol design considered better than X11's by experienced X.Org developers?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Yes, Jamey Sharp, who co-created the XCB library used for X11 clients, said he was 'honestly really impressed' by Wayland's protocol design after writing his first Wayland client. He said he could see the impact of every lesson Wayland's designers learned from X11 and from XCB, and called Wayland's complexity tradeoff the right one. Tracking how veteran X11 developers assess Wayland's design? daily.dev collects firsthand takes like this."}}]} ```