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> JSON looks good when compared to XML. JSON looks good compared to what we'd be using instead of JSON, which is nothing so nice and structured as XML. The com
by msla 6y ago
> JSON looks good when compared to XML.
JSON looks good compared to what we'd be using instead of JSON, which is nothing so nice and structured as XML. The competition to JSON is something infinitely more ad-hoc, probably without a distinct parser, such that a generic library to generate or consume it is impossible, and getting usable error messages is equally impossible.
> "The only substantial shortcomings of JSON I see are shortcomings associated with any textual serialization format. Optimizing for human readability in a use case that's not 99.99% of the time not read by a human."
I agree with this and disagree at the same time: Optimizing for human readability means optimizing for the weird case, the 0.01% (but it seems to be more often than that) of the time you need to go beyond the tools you have to fix something. Saying that's rare is true but inapt: Seatbelts are only used in rare cases, too.
- nitrogen 6y agoIf we didn't have JSON we'd have settled on something like MsgPack.
- cbsmith 6y agoYour 0.01% case is perhaps true with a binary format, but by using JSON, that 0.01% case just became a whole lot larger. ;-) It's like, "hey, we came up with a simple way to do it, but to make it easier to deal with this little edge condition that creates complexity, let's significantly up the complexity and number of edge conditions so they're endemic to the space, and then we're all good go". The irony is, I invariably end up needing to use a computer to help me read JSON anyway.