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Stop Telling Us XMPP Should Use JSON

37 points by todsacerdoti

by RadiozRadioz

1 subcomments

To take a slightly cynical view, but a view I honestly believe in, on the want to switch to JSON: XML looks old, most programmers have shallow opinions and chase new things.
It's not parsing performance, computers are plenty fast for text IM. It's not bandwidth, the difference between JSON and XML is negligible after compression. It's not developer ergonomics, any sane programmer is using a library that abstracts either format. It's not compatibility with the domain, as XML wins for XMPP due to namespaces.
The answer is that XML looks old. New programmers (half of all programmers have less than 5 years of experience) grew up in a world of JavaScript where XML was "legacy" since the day they arrived. In reality it's kept working fine, while the volume of software has increased around it naturally using the trendy tools. They've not looked back to understand why it was made or why it has merits, it's already got negative connotations and they're caught up in the new stuff. The new stuff has merit too, that is why a programmer is wise to respect both.
Also, what use is a stable and mature XML ecosystem when you can earn big nerd points by reinventing XPath for JSON the 5th time?

by up-n-atom

2 subcomments

Is it really a question about processing performance though? I’ve always assumed it was about bandwidth and latency… Communication protocols don’t need to be human-readable because tooling has always provided that at a higher level. A binary protocol just as a text protocol like S-expression or the divine simplicity of IRC is just as digestible when documented. And there are better facilities to have extensibility regardless. I think we can all agree it’s as much a failure as a success if we’re still talking the same points 25 years later.

by zzo38computer

0 subcomment

I agree that it should not use JSON. I think it would be better to use DER (or SDSER if streaming is needed) rather than XML or JSON, but that is just my opinion. However, if the existing protocol already uses XML, then that is what it will be, but the new one perhaps would not use XML.

by soul_grafitti

0 subcomment

Here's a thought - the thing that will ultimately doom XML, and perhaps JSON as well, will be the extra expense XML incurs when being tokenized for LLMs.

by hasperdi

3 subcomments

If they did adopt JSON then it wouldn't be XMPP anymore.
As a user, I don't care much. But my experience with XMPP is that was not as solid as other solutions, including closed source ones. I could've been issues in clients' implementation, but overall it wasn't great