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Posted on December 30th, 2006 /
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davewiner,
json
Remember back in March when Dave Winer said that "probably before the end of 2006, I will put this site in mothballs, in archive mode, and go on to other things, Murphy-willing of course." ? Lots of people got bent out of shape, asking Dave to not stop his blog. It is now the very early in the morning of December 30th 2006. Did Murphy step in, or did Dave change his mind at some point?
Clearly Dave can still cause a big stir. Take his recent call to find a tree and string up Douglas Crockford because he came up with JSON (JavaScript Object Notation). Which of course, is “NOT EVEN XML!”. Lots of blog posts came from his comments on JSON, with Adam Kalsey really poking fun. There are stickers, buttons and a shirt available :-)
Another wait and see situation.
UPDATE : Looks like Dave already said that he’d keep blogging until at least April 2007.
Why JSON isn’t just for JavaScript – Simon Willison.
The sweet spot for JSON is serializing simple data structures for transfer between programming languages. If you need more complex data structures (maybe with some kind of schema for validation), use XML. If you want to do full blown RPC use SOAP or XML-RPC. If you just want a light-weight format for moving data around, JSON fits the bill admirably.
What do we lose from not using XML? The ability to use XML tools. If you’re someone who breathes XSLT that might be a problem; if like me your approach when faced with XML is to parse it in to a more agreeable data structure as soon as possible you’ll find JSON far more productive.
Emphasis mine.
I’ve been thinking more and more about JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) lately. If you aren’t familiar with JSON here’s some reading:
Unless I see a serious counter argument, I’m ready to jump on the replace XML with JSON boat. Other proposed ideas based on JSON include JSONRequest (a safer version of XMLHttpRequest) and JSON-RPC (like XML-RPC without the XML).
This leads me to my next thought, should the existing feed formats (RSS & ATOM) be replaced with JSON? I’m not 100% sure that this is the right thing, but I’m giving it serious consideration.