Master Foo and the Network Stack

One day a student came to Master Foo and asked:

Why are all the protocols on the internet so noisy? Most formats are wasteful ascii, there are unstandardized extensions everywhere and implementations are buggy due to incomplete specs. If we just switched to binary protocols, would our communication not be much more efficient?

And Master Foo showed him one of his more aged projects. But the student was startled by the terse syntax, the lack of spaces and could not spot a single comment. Convinced he had been taught otherwise, he asked:

Forgive me Master Foo, I can not read your code but I am merely a beginner. Would it not be for my trust in your resolve and skill, I might fear for this project's maintenance. I'd need to spend many hours compiling a documentation.

And Master Foo answered:

You see, for the compiler all code is equal. Comments are superficial save for the human mind.

The student wondered:

But if we were concerned only about the processing speed of the machine, would it not be wiser to preprocess our sources into compiled objects already?

The master smiled:

Yes, in fact I do this already for projects that are no longer developed.

And the student was enlightened.