JC – JSONifies the output of many CLI tools
While I can appreciate the immediate value this tool brings for some applications.<p>At the same time it’s an epitome of everything that is wrong with current software landscape. Instead of fixing the deficiencies in upstream, once and for all, we just keep piling more and more layers on top.<p>Programs having structural data and APIs inside, that get translated into human representation - only to  be re-parsed again into structural form. What could possibly go wrong?<p>If you are already in any programming environment, many of the tools already have better built in APIs. I mean who needs an “ls” or timestamp parser. Just use os.listdir or equivalent. As someone previously pointed out in this thread, the ls parser is in fact already broken, unsurprisingly. Mixing tools made for interactive use in automation is never a good idea.<p>The Unix philosophy sounds romantic in theory, but need structural data, throughout, to work reliably in practice. Kids, go with the underlying apis unless your tool has structured output.