3 ms·

It's always strange to think that we went through formats like XML (and even earlier, XDR) before inventing something as seemingly simple and obvious as JSON.

eru 4y ago
We had S-Expressions before we had JSON. (And JavaScript originally wanted to be a Lisp, too.) It's not that we had XML and SGML and XDR because nobody had invented something as simple as JSON, yet. The real reasons are some complicated social hodgepodge that made those complicated beasts more accepted than the already-invented simpler approaches.
s3000 4y ago
Why does React use JSX when it could be all JavaScript and JSON? My guess is that XML is good for situations where text and data is mixed.
- kaoD 4y ago
  Named closing tags are good when manually writing stuff because it reduces the opportunity for errors.
  - alpaca128 4y ago
    What advantage does that have compared to simple bracket highlighting and indentation? Editors can easily highlight mismatched parentheses, they are however rarely smart enough to auto-close XML tag pairs. I just see it as unnecessary clutter. Meanwhile the only issue I have with JSON is the lack of support for trailing commas.
    - postalrat 4y ago
      Named closing tags are another confirmation when inserting stuff at the end. I think multiple different confirmations can be easier to recognize than a single one.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
  because separating attributes and child elements is actually useful in that context. better matches the Dom. and we need the power of js to do stuffs.
- simplotek 4y ago
  > My guess is that XML is good for situations where text and data is mixed. I don't agree. My take is that HTML/XML-like syntaxes benefit from familiarity from front-end developers, and a DSL to express document/component trees ends up simplifying the job of expressing document/component trees.
  - postalrat 4y ago
    "a DSL"... like HTML? Or do you have one in mind you feel is better.
simplotek 4y ago
> It's always strange to think that we went through formats like XML (and even earlier, XDR) before inventing something as seemingly simple and obvious as JSON. It's my understanding that JSON was not invented. It's just the necessary and sufficient parts of JavaScript to define data structures, and could be parsed/imported in a browser with a call to eval(). People who complain about JSON completely miss the whole point. It's not that it's great or trouble-free, it's that it solved the need to exchange data with a browser without requiring any library or framework.
- irrational 4y ago
  I don’t understand what you mean by JSON was not invented. It was invented by Douglas Crockford. Before he invented JSON, we used XML to pass data around the web. After he invented JSON, it took quite awhile to catch on. There were many years of transition where some web services would only send xml and others could send xml or json. Eventually all web services gave you the choice of which one it would send. And then, gradually, xml was transitioned out and everything was json.
  - simplotek 4y ago
    > I don’t understand what you mean by JSON was not invented. It was invented by Douglas Crockford. Douglas Crockford took his time to write up a specification for the JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). That specification is, quite literally, "based on a subset of the JavaScript Programming Language Standard ECMA-262 3rd Edition - December 1999." It's in the name. There is no way around this. MDN's doc on JavaScript's eval() vs JSON.parse() refer to JSON as "a subset of JavaScript syntax to represent data." Claiming that someone discovered JSON makes as much sense as reading the C standard section on struct initialization and proceed to claim you discovered the C struct notation (CSN). https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/language/struct_initialization https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/language/struct_initializati...
    - irrational 4y ago
      I don’t think that means it was not invented. Otherwise we would have had it years before. What I understand “based on a subset of JavaScript” to mean is, Crockford chose some of the JS data types (object, array, number, string) and invented a string representation of them that could be used as a data interchange format. That was revolutionary. I remember when I first learned about JSON. It felt like Crockford was a genius for coming up with it, and then wondering why nobody else had come up with it before him. There is no way we would have suffered through XML Hell for so many years I’d there had been another option. But there wasn’t another option. Why? Because Crockford hadn’t invented JSON yet.

eru 4y ago

We had S-Expressions before we had JSON. (And JavaScript originally wanted to be a Lisp, too.) It's not that we had XML and SGML and XDR because nobody had invented something as simple as JSON, yet. The real reasons are some complicated social hodgepodge that made those complicated beasts more accepted than the already-invented simpler approaches.

s3000 4y ago

Why does React use JSX when it could be all JavaScript and JSON? My guess is that XML is good for situations where text and data is mixed.

kaoD 4y ago
Named closing tags are good when manually writing stuff because it reduces the opportunity for errors.
- alpaca128 4y ago
  What advantage does that have compared to simple bracket highlighting and indentation? Editors can easily highlight mismatched parentheses, they are however rarely smart enough to auto-close XML tag pairs. I just see it as unnecessary clutter. Meanwhile the only issue I have with JSON is the lack of support for trailing commas.
  - postalrat 4y ago
    Named closing tags are another confirmation when inserting stuff at the end. I think multiple different confirmations can be easier to recognize than a single one.
8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
because separating attributes and child elements is actually useful in that context. better matches the Dom. and we need the power of js to do stuffs.
simplotek 4y ago
> My guess is that XML is good for situations where text and data is mixed. I don't agree. My take is that HTML/XML-like syntaxes benefit from familiarity from front-end developers, and a DSL to express document/component trees ends up simplifying the job of expressing document/component trees.
- postalrat 4y ago
  "a DSL"... like HTML? Or do you have one in mind you feel is better.

simplotek 4y ago

> It's always strange to think that we went through formats like XML (and even earlier, XDR) before inventing something as seemingly simple and obvious as JSON. It's my understanding that JSON was not invented. It's just the necessary and sufficient parts of JavaScript to define data structures, and could be parsed/imported in a browser with a call to eval(). People who complain about JSON completely miss the whole point. It's not that it's great or trouble-free, it's that it solved the need to exchange data with a browser without requiring any library or framework.

irrational 4y ago
I don’t understand what you mean by JSON was not invented. It was invented by Douglas Crockford. Before he invented JSON, we used XML to pass data around the web. After he invented JSON, it took quite awhile to catch on. There were many years of transition where some web services would only send xml and others could send xml or json. Eventually all web services gave you the choice of which one it would send. And then, gradually, xml was transitioned out and everything was json.
- simplotek 4y ago
  > I don’t understand what you mean by JSON was not invented. It was invented by Douglas Crockford. Douglas Crockford took his time to write up a specification for the JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). That specification is, quite literally, "based on a subset of the JavaScript Programming Language Standard ECMA-262 3rd Edition - December 1999." It's in the name. There is no way around this. MDN's doc on JavaScript's eval() vs JSON.parse() refer to JSON as "a subset of JavaScript syntax to represent data." Claiming that someone discovered JSON makes as much sense as reading the C standard section on struct initialization and proceed to claim you discovered the C struct notation (CSN). https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/language/struct_initialization https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/language/struct_initializati...
  - irrational 4y ago
    I don’t think that means it was not invented. Otherwise we would have had it years before. What I understand “based on a subset of JavaScript” to mean is, Crockford chose some of the JS data types (object, array, number, string) and invented a string representation of them that could be used as a data interchange format. That was revolutionary. I remember when I first learned about JSON. It felt like Crockford was a genius for coming up with it, and then wondering why nobody else had come up with it before him. There is no way we would have suffered through XML Hell for so many years I’d there had been another option. But there wasn’t another option. Why? Because Crockford hadn’t invented JSON yet.