[guenthert]

Sure, converting (or interpreting) structured data is easier then unstructured. I doubt anyone is arguing that. I interpret op's statement however in that unstructured data is easier to couple unrelated tools. Tools perhaps which haven't written yet, by teams not knowing of each other and hence are unable to agree on a structure.

[kbrazil]

I feel like if that were true then you’d have the majority of REST APIs delivering unstructured output instead of structured JSON, XML, CSV, etc. The market has spoken - there is true utility in structured text output.