On: Why do so many tools have JSON config files?

[stagas]

Lack of comments is pretty big though for a human editable config.

[krapp → stagas]

JSON still a very simple and useful format and being natively supported on the web and by javascript basically guarantees its universality. Native comments would be nice though. But to be fair even Douglas Crockford suggested using comments in JSON was fine as long as you stripped them out before parsing.

<whispers>but Lua tables are even better.</whispers>

[dd8601fn → stagas]

It’s just one person’s opinion, but I think two things are true enough, here…

1) JSON is pretty darn good for storing configuration. Everything speaks it, and a pretty printed one is very readable/tweakable in a pinch.

2) If you insist that someone manually edit a significant amount of it, you kinda fucked up.

Just my opinion, but it feels like two separate things.

[6510 → stagas]

I just put them in as values. In a GUI I sometimes render them as a editable textarea.

[arcanemachiner → stagas]

You can always use JSONC or JSON5.