alt Hacker News> All these tools could've just as well grown to be popular with a proper format, and your point would be exactly the same
And what would this "proper format" be? Currently JSON is in vogue (or JSON5, which allows comments?), but a few years ago it would have been XML, before that… CSV? TSV?
Or perhaps do a Choose Your Own Adventure:
* https://libxo.readthedocs.io/
The Unix-y world has been around for decades, so it many ways it has evolved rather than be designed.
Yes, the lack of good design in that world is apparent and will continue to cripple a few more generations (but re. evolution that's often a false reading - in many cases it's some primitive napkin design made at the beginning of those decades that stuck without much evolution), but you've wandered into the wrong thread - it's not about the single best format that could've been, just about a circular logic flaw in the argument