> I don't think human readability is a critical feature of JSON at this point. If that's your priority, you can use YAML.
Wow you have kinda lost the plot on a few things.
JSON was designed to be human readable and writable. YAML was designed to be a human readable format for the automated interchange of data between automated systems. Human writability was neither a goal for YAML nor its intended use. Like everyone else on the frakking planet, you’ve misunderstood what YAML was intended and designed for. YAML was never intended for human-written configuration storage, which is what everyone used it for the instant after they became aware of it.
YAML can bite you very hard if you misunderstand it. JSON is simply invalid if you misunderstand it when writing it.
If you don’t need human readability, use a binary format. Binary formats are so freaking fast compared to literally any structured text format, past, present, or future. High speed and low latency matter and binary formats make both of those easier.
If you need to inspect the binary data, write a viewer using the code you use to read it. It’s a lot simpler than people believe it to be. I find Protobuf to be more of a hassle than writing the code myself, and protobuf is very easy to use, and I’m quite a moron. Binary stuff is not hard.