XML people were doing crazy things in the Java/.NET world and "<!--[if IE 6]>" was still a thing in HTML when JSON was being designed. I also would have wanted

XML people were doing crazy things in the Java/.NET world and "<!--[if IE 6]>" was still a thing in HTML when JSON was being designed. I also would have wanted comments, but I see why Crockford must have been skeptical. He just didn't want JSON to be the next XML.