That's because this is the way they thought back then. You can trivially pass json data between processes and make a coherent structured system. Nobody does it though.

jq has >20k stars on GitHub.

I use it mostly for little cli utilities, so maybe it isn’t an exact refutation of your claim.

[0] https://github.com/stedolan/jq

Sure, but I think the bigger problem is complete systems. Look at a usual Linux box. It has a bunch of files, all with their custom syntax, and you parse them with error-prone shell commands. If everything used json, everyone's lives would've been so much better.

Independent programs using json is a step in the right direction though.