Dan Luu

More importantly, this isn't fixable by versioning. A new version of JSON couldn't make JS/Racket/Java have the same number system.

This works fine in protobuf, thrift, cap'n proto, flatbuffers, etc. because they're precise about their types.

The point of JSON is to map to the "native" types in each language. JSON's approach has drawbacks, but versioning is irrelevant.

If that's the point, the original spec is quite odd in specifying, multiple times, "very much like a C or Java". Why say that?

also odd that it says that it's based on of ECMA-262 and only has one type of number. Relatively few languages only have one number

IMO it seems more like someone who writes js created a thing that's convenient in js and falls over if you want (for ex) int and fp

if it were versioned like websockets someone could tell me in the protocol they're using extension XYZ and pass me an int

instead they tell me verbally that vars A, B, and C, which are passed as strings, should instead be parsed as ints