There is certainly a learning curve with jq that can put people off. The attraction is that the end result is a very small amount of code that does only one thi

There is certainly a learning curve with jq that can put people off. The attraction is that the end result is a very small amount of code that does only one thing: parse a JSON file, rather than invoking an external script that might send many HTTP requests or launch a missile. As the complexity of the input JSON grows or the complexity of your processing, it does makes sense to leave jq behind for a higher level language.