We Deserve Better Than JSON as a DSL

It always starts innocently, you're creating a new config or endpoint with some dynamic behavior, thinking "KISS - Keep It Stupidly Simple". What's simpler than JSON or TOML? Some key-value pairs, ...

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We Deserve Better Than JSON as a DSL

Source: DEV Community

It always starts innocently, you're creating a new config or endpoint with some dynamic behavior, thinking "KISS - Keep It Stupidly Simple". What's simpler than JSON or TOML? Some key-value pairs, maybe some nesting, we'll actually keep it clean this time. Any experienced programmer knows what comes next. Six months later you're hunting for a $ref in a sea of JSON, writing helper tools, trapped under a stack of legacy decisions, full of regret. I've done it. You've done it. The entire industry has done it. GitHub Actions is YAML with a custom expression language bolted on. Terraform invented HCL because JSON wasn't expressive enough. OpenAPI is JSON Schema with extensions piled on top. Every AI framework has its own JSON-based tool definition format that's slightly different from the others. The problem isn't the formats. JSON, YAML, TOML - they're all fine at what they do. The problem is that we keep asking them to carry logic they were never designed to hold, then building increasing

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