wait... I don't understand comments like these. You're not the only one to make these claims, but I'll address yours specificially: > but intrinsically you can

wait... I don't understand comments like these. You're not the only one to make these claims, but I'll address yours specificially: > but intrinsically you can't look at XML file and know how a codified representation should look like... Let's compare: <book> <title>How To Be Awesome</title> <subtitle>Surviving on HN Posts</subtitle> <author> <first_name>Max</first_name> <last_name>Power</last_name> </author> </book> vs { "title": "Being Awesome", "subtitle" : "Surviving on HN Posts", "author": { "first_name" : "Max", "last_name" : "Power" } } To me, it seems that both of those: 1. need a schema to be useful as a standard 2. express their hierarchy 3. don't specify data type (although I could add that info to both if needed) 4. have a level of annoying to them (commas, colons, angle brackets, etc) which modern IDEs have taken care of for us. > if you have an element it will have properties and child elements... said child elements may contain children, strings, or ??? I need to use documentation to use `package.json` files too, because each node may or may not contain children. Node graciously tells me if I missed something. Docbook also tells me if my XML is malformed. I see no difference here, > JSON maps much more naturally to an object model in a given language. It maps to a hash/dictionary. I'm not sure that qualifies as an "object model" unless you only write JavaScript. I'd really like people to understand that XML is, like HTML, really great at describing and marking up content so that something else may process it.