[KMag]

> That's the problem with these bespoke binary formats like ELF - they're not designed to encode arbitrary schemas of data, they're designed for very specific tasks and then when they get used outside of their intended environment, we get problems like have been described in this thread. Nobody has ever had these problems with a JSON document - maybe with something that consumed one, but the file format itself simply does not have the same kind of limitations like ELF does. It has different limitations, but they're not of a fundamental and semantic nature like they are in a more rigid format

This is nothing specific to binary formats, but specific to insufficiently extensible formats. Note that I specifically mentioned flatbuffers, which provide for extensibility while keeping parsing latency low.

Also, ELF was designed to be extensible by adding new sections. You could totally add functionality by adding a new section holding JSON data.

Don't confuse JSON with extensibility. I've seen plenty of headaches with poorly thought out JSON schemas where forward compatibility wasn't sufficiently well thought out. There are also tons of elegantly extensible binary formats. ELF is just old; much older than JSON. A new binary format would probably be more elegantly extensible.