[lillecarl]

json is fast, according to https://github.com/xi-editor/xi-editor/blob/master/README.md... "I considered binary formats, but the actual improvement in performance would be completely in the noise. Using JSON considerably lowers friction for developing plug-ins, as it’s available out of the box for most modern languages, and there are plenty of the libraries available for the other ones."

It doesn't have to be a one size fits all solution, there are edge cases where json wouldn't be the right choice, but for many and most things i could think of that i use daily I'd be happy with json. If it's small binary data i guess it could be base64 encoded.

Querying network interfaces, directories, process information, systemd daemons or anything else, i see these things could do great if they just outputted json and my shell could treat it as an object. If a script is performance critical, maybe it's time to rewrite it in another language anyways?