So is xml. Json is relatively unstructured compared to other formats.
I think json has several advantages though. It’s a relatively lightweight and widely known serialization standard, rich enough for most cases and extensible in others, and it has easy to use parsers in all major programming languages.
Also jsonlines is a simple addition that make it easy for json to play well with non-json aware older Unix tools.
It has a few shortcomings but I think its advantages outweigh them, and it’s become a pretty widely used standard in a short time.
