This spring I had a quick glance at NATS (a high performance open source messaging system) and its protocol and I went: "OMG, it's like so simple and therefore so tremendously beautiful". Why? I told you. It's simple. And I can read it. As in read it and understand it without having to read a boring specification about a binary fixed protocol format. Writing code is easy. Writing code that others understand is also easy. But coming up with stuff that attracts people is harder. This will be a session where I show you how one simple protocol inspired me to build an open source NATS client that became faster than the official one. We will also of course look at how simple NATS is to get started with and the messaging patterns you can use with it. If time allows we will have a look at design decisions I took to get the metrics I got.