CSV is totally fine if you use it for the right kind of data and the right application. That means: - data that has predictable value types (mostly numbers and

CSV is totally fine if you use it for the right kind of data and the right application. That means: - data that has predictable value types (mostly numbers and short labels would be fine), e.g. health data about a school class wouldn't involve random binary fields or unbounded user input - data that has a predictable, managable length — e.g. the health data of the school class wouldn't be dramatically longer than the number of students in that class - data with a long sampling period. If you read that dataset once a week performance and latency become utterly irrelevant - if the shape of your data is already tabular and not e.g. a graph with many references to other rows - if the gain in human readability and compatibility for the layperson outweighs potential downsides about the format - if you use a sane default for encoding (utf8, what else), quoting, escaping, delimiter etc. Every file format is a choice, often CSV isn't the wrong one (but: very often it is).