As you may have read, Dave Winer has decided to pee all over JSON. JSON is a data serialization format - a way of specifying how the output of deconstructing data structures (arrays (lists), hashtables (lists where one value is associated with another by definition - akin in form to real-life dictionaries) and ordinary values, like numbers and text strings) should look.
Why Dave Winer takes issue with this is hard to imagine. JSON is not the first data serialization format, nor particularly suboptimal for any one task, nor the most obtuse, nor underspecified, nor completely unnecessary, nor verbose, nor patent encumbered, nor owned by anyone in particular. Dave Winer seems to only have two articulate worries with this:
JSON is not based on the data serialization format specified in SOAP, a protocol for web services.
JSON is not an XML format.
Dave Winer goes on to not list the apparently self-evident advantages of SOAP’s data serialization format over JSON, nor note how JSON’s parsing rules borrow heavily from JavaScript, codified as ECMAScript by, yes, that’s right, ECMA, a standards organization.
For his closing act, Dave Winer also declares that he hates how he’ll now have to write his own parser, ignoring in one fell swoop both a) the forest of existing JSON parsers out there for a number of sundry languages, b) the added difficulty and complexity of writing an XML parser from scratch versus writing a JSON parser from scratch and c) the added semantics that is usually read-into anything inside any form of XML format whereas JSON data may just be a bunch of free-form data. Dave Winer tops off by explicitly enunciating his desire to lynch everyone using JSON.