Now, props where props are due: Sun crushed the collections APIs compared to other languages at the time. And that more than makes up for everything else.

But I see little evidence that standardizing JSON parsing will improve things.

Perhaps Sun should have just adopted slf4j and a simple console-logging stub, but I don't think j.u.l is really any worse than the alternatives -- only a different implementation.

Now date APIs: those do suck, but I think the new Date JSR will finally get things to a place where we can use Java Dates rather than Joda.

But it is unclear how many of the existing implementations conform to it, and it definitely doesn't work toward your misguided One True JSON Implementation goal.

Above and beyond the fact that in section 2.2 of the JSR it plainly states: "This JSR is targeted for Java SE 6 or higher and Java EE 7 or higher platforms."

FYI: Just looked at your nanojson, looks good. Might have to try it out, i like the fluent api for object creation.

It becomes one when serializing and de-serializing across a distributed application like xerces class path issues in different jvm implementations.Not a common sore point though!

>> Chances are many of these options would still exist even if there was an official API.

True and agreed.