Uhm, it has been done. Writing an obviously correct csexp serializer is literally 3 lines of code in a high level language and writing a deserializer is only sl

Uhm, it has been done. Writing an obviously correct csexp serializer is literally 3 lines of code in a high level language and writing a deserializer is only slightly more LOCs (and yeah, I've used it in production for real stuff). If your model of the world is that because you don't know something it can't be vastly better than the stuff you know and that is widely used, you should consider refining that model. It's not how things work; sometimes fields take a wrong turn that is difficult to recover from or get swamped by morons who drive the good people out. A lot of what we have in 2020 would strike a smart practioner from half a century ago as shockingly braindead and outmoded and a lot would seem like scifi. XML is not a member of the scifi category.