What?! You mean everyone is just endlessly reinventing the wheel? You mean they start out simple then quickly realise much of the complexity of the prior is useful?!
I wouldn't call JSON a reinvented wheel. It has different tradeoffs, and so fills a real niche that XML couldn't.
However, we, the engineering community tend to fall in this hammer-nail mindset. Where we know and like JSON, and then start applying it outside of its fitting niche.
We start using it for configuration (only to find out it's lack of features such as not allowing comments makes it fully unusable).
We invent stuff like symlinks, linked data, schemas, JSLT, etc. rather than moving to a much more appropriate format, we change the inappropriate format into an abomination.
However, we, the engineering community tend to fall in this hammer-nail mindset. Where we know and like JSON, and then start applying it outside of its fitting niche.
We start using it for configuration (only to find out it's lack of features such as not allowing comments makes it fully unusable).
We invent stuff like symlinks, linked data, schemas, JSLT, etc. rather than moving to a much more appropriate format, we change the inappropriate format into an abomination.