I am on record as not particularly loving JSON as a serialization format. It's fine, and I'm certainly not going to die on any hills over it, but I think that as we stripped down the complexity of XML we threw away too much.
On the flip side, the simplicity means that it's harder to use it wrong. It's absent many footguns.
Well, one might think. But then Hootentoot ran into a problem. You see, an internal partner needed to send them a JSON document which contains a JSON document. Now, one might say, "isn't any JSON object a valid sub-document? Can't you just nest JSON inside of JSON all day? What could go wrong here?"
"value":"[{\"value\":\"1245\",\"begin_datum\":\"2025-05-19\",\"eind_datum\":null},{\"value\":\"1204\",\"begin_datum\":\"2025-05-19\",\"eind_datum\":\"2025-05-19\"}]",
This. This could go wrong. They embedded JSON inside of JSON… as a string.
Hootentoot references the hottest memes of a decade and a half ago to describe this Xzibit:
Yo dawg, i heard you like JSON, so i've put some JSON in your JSON
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This post originally appeared on The Daily WTF.