[usrusr]

I'm all for JSON-with-comments, and I even have a bit of a soft spot for the idea of JSON-with-expressions, but considering how far I expect this one to be on the "interchange" side of the spectrum between interchange formats and authoring formats, I doubt that comments will be missed a lot.

Certainly less, less by several orders of magnitude, than in the depressingly ubiquitous JSON-as-configuration use case...

[microtherion]

Another concern with comments is that apps might try to (ab)use them to store app specific information, which hurts the goal of an interchange format.

[throw0101b]

> Another concern with comments is that apps might try to (ab)use them […]

There's no "might" about. This is exactly what happened in the early/beta days of JSON, per Douglas Crockford, creator of JSON:

> I removed comments from JSON because I saw people were using them to hold parsing directives, a practice which would have destroyed interoperability. I know that the lack of comments makes some people sad, but it shouldn't.

* https://web.archive.org/web/20190112173904/https://plus.goog...

* https://archive.today/2015.07.04-102718/https://plus.google....

[coldtea]

There is a big but though: whether the loss of interoperability for those cases was any real loss. Those people wanted their own files parsed a specific way by their own infrastructure. Their files already weren't meant for every regular JSON parser: if they wanted wider interoperability they'd had dropped those comments.

And nobody stops them from continuing to use those meta-parsing semantics even if JSON-standards prohibits comments.

I think Crockford was wrong in his objection. It shouldn't have been his concern.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

"Oh no! Bad actors might abuse this absolutely necessary feature, so it's better that we leave it out and let everyone suffer to avoid that! You'll just have to cope!"

[throw0101b]

> "Oh no! Bad actors might abuse this […]

There's no "might" about. This is exactly what happened in the early/beta days of JSON, per Douglas Crockford, creator of JSON:

> I removed comments from JSON because I saw people were using them to hold parsing directives, a practice which would have destroyed interoperability. I know that the lack of comments makes some people sad, but it shouldn't.

* https://web.archive.org/web/20190112173904/https://plus.goog...

* https://archive.today/2015.07.04-102718/https://plus.google....

> […] absolutely necessary feature […]

It's so "absolutely necessary" that JSON has found hardly any success and is struggling to find a use case or a niche… /s

Or it seems that JSON works just fine without comments, especially as a data exchange format, which contradicts that claim that it is "necessary" (absolutely or otherwise).

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

> Or it seems that JSON works just fine without comments

Code that can't be annotated might as well be machine code. And guess what? Json largely is just that.

> It's so "absolutely necessary" that JSON has found hardly any success

I am almost 50, and since as early as I can remember, the worst technology always wins when there is some sort of standoff. That json succeeded doesn't mean anything, other than that it was the worst.

I'm old enough to understand why this is usually true... the best technology is usually more expensive, and economic forces favor the cheapest. Json though? Best I can figure is that imbeciles just got used to picking the worst, even when there was no expense tradeoff.

Snarking about how it won... I guess that means you think it was perfect on its first try? When the fuck has that ever happened with software?

You're just plainly wrong, and I don't know why or how you'd bother to be. Do you have a few hundred million in JSON Inc. shares about to IPO and somehow I missed it?

[microtherion]

I've missed comments in JSON myself, when writing stuff like configuration files. But interchange formats are a different beast, not really meant to be read by humans. And if they need comments to be comprehensible, one might wonder whether the scheme chosen was insufficiently self documenting in the first place.

[vilunov]

They might do it even without comments by adding unused fields.

[usrusr]

Which, if dropped, are a clear change to the document in question. Whereas a dropped comment would have to be considered equal, even if the "special comment aware software" might not agree at all. I'm not happy with the decision, but I can't refuse the argument some merit.