XML has comments. XML can be programmable. You can make <If> and <Loop> constructs if you so desired while being trivially parse-able. XML can be arbitrarily

XML has comments. XML can be programmable. You can make <If> and <Loop> constructs if you so desired while being trivially parse-able. XML can be arbitrarily strongly typed. JSON really was a step backwards in many ways. I think the main reason JSON took over was that it looks nicer and is easier to type by hand (as if everyone doesn't have editor macros for XML).