Yes, yes. And we could also have everything as binary. Now, UNIX people decided long ago to use plain text to communicate between processes, mostly because it's infinitely easier to read - and makes it possible to edit by hand if you need to. Have to interface with a REST API which consumes JSON and you want to do some testing? Open your text editor anywhere curl is installed, and you're done. That's pretty damn convenient.

If so, use Protobuf, BSON and jump in the wagon for SPDY.

Why JSON at all if you don't care about reading it?

I'm not against Protobuf, BSON, SPDY and the likes, my argument is just that JSON is used over binary formats only because it's readable.

It must be nice to live in a world in which you never have to read JSON. Or, for that matter, any other format which is used to exchange data between machines - binary included. Worse, sometimes even XML.

I should like to visit that world one day.

json.org:

> JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data-interchange format. It is easy for humans to read and write.