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JSON is a human readable format. Machine readable means only a specialized program can be used to make human understand it.
by Ygg2 2y ago
JSON is a human readable format. Machine readable means only a specialized program can be used to make human understand it.
- AndrewDucker 2y agoMachine readable just means a machine can read it. Whether humans can read it as well is irrelevant to the definition. (And there are pretty much no formats that a human hasn't learned to read, up to and including binary)
- Ygg2 2y agoSo every text is machine-readable? Because even English can now be readable by a machine via LLM. Then why use machine-readable? Just say text.
- AndrewDucker 2y agoIt generally means something with a well specified format which can be processed by a parser.
- Ygg2 2y agoTechnically, LLM can be a parser, if you tell it to output its findings in another data format, as: A parser is a software component that takes input data (typically text) and builds a data structure
- raverbashing 2y agoThat is a very good way of shooting yourself in the foot Now every API call is a "call to an LLM"? How much will that cost? Oh and how are you calling the LLM API in the first place?
- Ygg2 2y agoKeep in mind, I consider what's machine-readable to mean, what's only readable by a machine. I.e. a magnetic tape is machine-readable, while JSON is human-readable.
- oneeyedpigeon 2y agoThat's a minority definition. Few of the rest of us would say "JSON isn't machine-readable".
- javawizard 2y ago> I consider what's machine-readable to mean [...] I hate to break it to you but the world has a very different and well agreed-upon definition of what "machine readable" means. You're going to get nowhere if you continue to argue that your definition is the correct one. That ship sailed long ago.
- Ygg2 2y agoOk. But what is machine-readable, then? Is a picture of my passport machine-readable? Is a PDF machine-readable? How do you classify it? And what happens when ten years in the future once algorithms become more optimized? If an AI can read Shakespeare, and parse its paragraph for verbing a noun, is all human written stuff then machine-readable?
- iinnPP 2y agoThe picture of your passport is machine-readable to any machine that can read it. That is not all machines. The significance of JSON, and the submission itself, seems to be in the ubiquity of JSON making it more machine-readable than other formats. You're being too strict with language and definitions.
- Ygg2 2y ago> You're being too strict with language and definitions. Yeah, because the stricter the definition, the more useful it is. A "thing" has less informational value than a "yellow jacket" and that has less informational value than "white and yellow jacket, with Adidas logo".
- DonHopkins 2y agoParsers don't hallucinate.
- cladopa 2y agoAt 2 tokens per second? Needing a network connection or sending your data(including confidential's) to the cloud? needing very expensive GPUs? With hallucinations and tremendous energy expense. I parse things usually at a rate of 2-20 million tokens per second, on a local computer. Never hallucinates and it is always perfect. Don't get me wrong. I use LLMs a lot, but they are good at what they are good at.
- discreteevent 2y agoIt's both. "Readable" means "possible to read it". On the human readability side, though, the obligation to enquote string keys irks me a lot.
- Ygg2 2y agoHaving had to have displeasure to program parsers for YAML, the ability to start your word with a valid token symbol in an unquoted string (for example :this or ,this or &:hate_you) is so limiting and prevents many optimizations.
- Philpax 2y ago"Trivially parseable by machines" is not mutually exclusive with "Trivially parseable by humans". JSON is both.
- rusk 2y agoJSON is machine readable first; and human readable for convenience. Its primary purpose is for machine to machine communication, but it does allow human intervention. People have used that as a signal to start using it for configuration files but that is an anti pattern in my opinion. If you want something like JSON that is designed for humans take a look at YAML
- orphea 2y agoI will pick JSON over YAML every single time. Not because JSON is so good, it's just YAML is so much more cancerous.
- yas_hmaheshwari 2y agoCan you explain why is Yaml cancerous (Genuine question) I have always preferred (even without thinking) to use configuration files as Yaml and kept Json for interprocess communication
- orphea 2y agoMany people explained it better than I ever could, so let me defer to them. TL;DR: YAML is an overcomplicated spec with too many footguns. - https://ruudvanasseldonk.com/2023/01/11/the-yaml-document-from-hell https://ruudvanasseldonk.com/2023/01/11/the-yaml-document-fr... - https://www.arp242.net/yaml-config.html https://www.arp242.net/yaml-config.html - https://noyaml.com/ https://noyaml.com/ (couldn't not mention this famous piece)
- rusk 2y ago“I don’t want to learn how to use it properly therefore it’s like [bad thing I clearly have no experience of]” JSON is not fit for purpose as a configuration format. Use YAML or don’t, use properties if you like. JSON is first and foremost for m2m- it’s even in the name “Object Notation”
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- cladopa 2y agoNo. It means that the parsing code is trivial to make instead of using some kind of LALR, SLR, Earley monstrosities with hundreds of megabytes of grammar tables in memory, just to understand the output of a program like "ls" or "find" or "grep". JSON is ALSO easy for machines to read. I know because I made several JSON parsers myself. I have also made parsers for computer languages(with things like PEG) and natural languages and there is a world of difference.