Yahoo!'s Doug Crockford on Javascript

Reference: Yahoo!'s Doug Crockford on Javascript

Doug Crockford about developing JSON:

One interesting story about leaving things out: as we got closer to releasing JSON I decided to take out the ability to do comments. When translating JSON into other languages, often times the commenting piece was the most complicated part. By taking the commenting out we reduced the complexity of the parsers by half---everything else was just too simple.

I have wondered about why comments are not part of JSON. Now it makes sense.

One of the best features of JSON is that it's stable. If your program works now, it will work forever, and that is an attractive thing.

Yum. He has found a reasonable data structure format that could indeed last forever.

I still get notes from people saying they've got great ideas for the next version. But there isn't going to be a next version. I always say you're free to invent a new standard and promote it as much as you like.