My main complaint with XML is that it’s far too complex for most use cases (like config files), and thus requires an unhealthy amount of tooling to work with.

My main complaint with XML is that it’s far too complex for most use cases (like config files), and thus requires an unhealthy amount of tooling to work with. I can’t just load the file and run it through a parser and get an easily accessible object structure back, I’ll need to navigate the document with DOM or XPath. JSON with comments (aka JSONC) is in my opinion the best format in wide use today. It has structure and types, but not too many, and not a lot of magic, like YAML has, but for the most complex cases, JSON(C) falls short with its lack of extensibility and inheritance.