Interesting to see this convergence of syntax. Unfortunately, it's not true that you don't have to learn a "new syntax." As often with Ruby libraries, the devil is in the subtleties. This does not work (although I think it could): {"foo bar": 'b'} but this does: {:"foo bar" => 'b'} Without being truly JSON compatible, it's only moderately useful. One annoyance of Ruby for me has always been that many libraries, such…
I'm confident it's commonly understood best practice (among many languages at that) to use an underscore (_) in lieu of spaces in such things.
I agree that the quirks themselves are odd, but the matter of using a key with a space in it really stood out.