[atakiel]

Rich Hickey has a good point in his Rails Conf 2012 "Simplicity Matters" talk[0] - json is just more simple than xml, as it clearly states which parts are maps and which are sequences. Xml has an inherent, implicit order in everything, due to its history as a document markup language.

If you think xml through the lens of jsx pragma style transformation, xml element and it's attributes are more or less a (typed) map. Similarly element's children is an (ordered) sequence. Where as in json you can have maps inside maps, in xml you always have to wrap maps inside an ordered sequence, as maps can only be passed to element as its children.

You can totally use xml without paying attention to the order, but the order is still there, complicating things.

[0] Rails Conf 2012 Keynote: Simplicity Matters by Rich Hickey - https://youtu.be/rI8tNMsozo0?t=28m5s