If you are parsing known JSON schemas, defining them as types instead of generic dictionary lookups makes this a type-error, not a implementation error.

I can’t see why anyone would want not to do this.

Genuine question - how would I do this in VB.net? Is is as painful as I imagine, with a lot of classes?

I don’t think that’s painful at all. Yes you define it as a root class, with dependent classes as needed. This is the contract. It needs to be defined somehow, and IMO this is as good a way as any.

From there on you just use JSON.NET to convert your JSON-string to an instance of the root type, literally one line of code.

And after that you get code-completion and type-inference and compile-time checking for all data-object access.

It’s an absolute no-brainer.

Thanks! I need to look into that.