> a useless one
replyIf you have a (long) list of fields and you want to keep them lexicographically sorted, being able to reorder is quite useful if you rename a field.
Renaming is forbidden though (because JSON and textproto). In Google, it's a documented antipattern to try to make protobuf look "nice" by changing field indices, rearranging fields, etc. — the common ground is that it's better to not do it.
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