There are also significant disadvantages to text formats, most obviously in the area of compatibility. They’re easy enough that people have a dreadful habit of

There are also significant disadvantages to text formats, most obviously in the area of compatibility. They’re easy enough that people have a dreadful habit of ignoring specs (if they even exist) and introducing incompatibilities, which are not uncommonly even security vulnerabilities (e.g. HTTP request smuggling). CSV is a very good demonstration of these problems. Binary formats tend to be quite a bit more robust, with a much higher average quality of implementation, because they’re harder to work with.