The Curious Dominance of JSON in Config Files
A recent essay making the rounds on Hacker News examines why so many developer tools default to JSON for their configuration files, even though formats like YAML or TOML are often better suited for human editing. The piece argues that JSON's ubiquity comes down to practicality: it's already built into virtually every language's standard library, has a dead-simple grammar, and avoids the ambiguity pitfalls that have plagued YAML (like the infamous Norway problem, where 'no' gets parsed as false).
The tradeoff is readability. JSON lacks comments, requires strict quoting, and punishes trailing commas - all friction points for humans hand-editing config files, even though machines don't care.
Commenters on the discussion thread pushed back with their own favorites, from JSON5 and TOML to plain env files, with no clear consensus emerging beyond 'it depends on your audience.'