I would be willing to put a lot of money that the same application built on HTTP/JSON will be much much less error prone than the same app built on TCP sockets.
The tooling is better; debugging is easier; the interfaces are less finnicky; the transfer is less brittle; dealing with objects and documents is much easier conceptually than streams; very powerful performance optimizations and catching can just be turned on while being transparent to the app; crappy networking equipment won't ruin your day; corporate firewalls won't get in your way; encryption is basically drop-in with transparent tooling support.
In no way is HTTP/JSON the best protocol for every situation but thinking you can do better with something home grown on top of TCP is ignoring all the human effort that's gone into solving the problems with straight-tcp protocols. So yes any protocol that's had as much love put into it would probably be just as good but few things have.
The tooling is better; debugging is easier; the interfaces are less finnicky; the transfer is less brittle; dealing with objects and documents is much easier conceptually than streams; very powerful performance optimizations and catching can just be turned on while being transparent to the app; crappy networking equipment won't ruin your day; corporate firewalls won't get in your way; encryption is basically drop-in with transparent tooling support.
In no way is HTTP/JSON the best protocol for every situation but thinking you can do better with something home grown on top of TCP is ignoring all the human effort that's gone into solving the problems with straight-tcp protocols. So yes any protocol that's had as much love put into it would probably be just as good but few things have.