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Why does JSON have commas?


As it happens, I already wrote a post on why Commas are Bad. We did not arrive at any specific conclusion apart from commas maybe being worth rethinking and replacing with some other things.

In the sense of... in this format, commas are not just a result of some misguided design decision, with lingering, unpleasant effects, but a well-honed instrument of torture, clearly existing only to make your life more hellish. Derived from the array and dictionary literals of the programming language that was famously designed in 10 days(before suddenly taking over the internet), JSON has become ubiquitous; its simplicity is a great alternative to the arcane complexities of XML, the unreadability of many binary formats, and the... um... oddly alien lispyness of S-Expressions. Coming from this direction, the addition of commas feels like an evil plan to have more syntax errors, with no obvious benefit.

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