&gt;Complete lack of mechanical sympathy + laziness is why JSON is popular outside of the web world<p>I generally prefer JSON as a serialization format for a variety of reasons beyond what you cited:<p>1. Simplicity&#x2F;plain text. Even a total newb could read a JSON file and probably puzzle out how the data works. This is important if I&#x27;m providing an export function or otherwise expect my users might want to shop somewhere else to deal with this data.<p>2. Forward compatibility&#x2F;future proofing. If somebody finds my JSON file in twenty years with no documentation, (1) ensures that it&#x27;s not going to be lost to them and they&#x27;ll be able to extract the data with minimal difficulty.<p>3. Cross platform. It might not be the best format, but it&#x27;s going to be supported in pretty much any language I would ever want to add support for the data to in a new system.