Absolutely! I didn't write JC to be the be-all end-all. I wrote it because I believe using structured text between processes is usually better than plain text and this tool allows people to try it out and see for themselves. The goal is for people to see the benefits and require tools to output structured data, either for old utilities, or especially new ones.

Lots of people have asked for this, but the argument has always been that it can't be done, it's too hard. So I created JC to help open minds and change behavior. As I've said many times: the goal of JC is for JC to never have to exist. Hopefully it will persuade people that there is a better way and we should expect better from our existing tools without having to completely change the way we do things today.

JC supports over 70 programs and file-types today. I slowly, incrementally added more and more parsers over the last two years. Now it's to the point that it's hard to find popular apps that don't have coverage. lately, I get requests to add parsers for apps that already provide JSON output, which I don't do. :)

And those old apps like `ifconfig`? Many of those haven't been touched in a decade. There's not a huge risk of the output changing any time soon. (Believe me, I know - I went through the source code in several of these utilities to be able to figure out what to call some of the undocumented fields)

What I'm trying to say is that there are 100 reasons to say it won't work until you actually try it and you find that it actually works pretty well and opens up possibilities you hadn't thought of before.