this intrigues me. while the widespread use of JSON as JSON is perhaps what differentiates it from what i'm about to describe i propose that the concept is an inevitable or obvious means of data representation/manipulation. As an arguably irrelevant anecdote to support this proposition I submit that prior to my personal introduction to the existence of JSON I was organizing data in strings and in txt files in a format nearly identical to basic JSON and writing simple functions to essentially do the same thing. I submit that I am not special or particularly clever and therefore the baller-coders that cometh before me certainly had to have their own types of crap like this. If i didn't have a tablet in class i probably would have had their names in my notes, but i digress.
tl;dr - While the advent of JSON's incarnation and that of C are several decades apart the underlying concepts are not.
tl;dr;dr - just realized your second sentence kinda says this.
this intrigues me. while the widespread use of JSON as JSON is perhaps what differentiates it from what i'm about to describe i propose that the concept is an inevitable or obvious means of data representation/manipulation. As an arguably irrelevant anecdote to support this proposition I submit that prior to my personal introduction to the existence of JSON I was organizing data in strings and in txt files in a format nearly identical to basic JSON and writing simple functions to essentially do the same thing. I submit that I am not special or particularly clever and therefore the baller-coders that cometh before me certainly had to have their own types of crap like this. If i didn't have a tablet in class i probably would have had their names in my notes, but i digress.
tl;dr - While the advent of JSON's incarnation and that of C are several decades apart the underlying concepts are not.
tl;dr;dr - just realized your second sentence kinda says this.