> my experience implementing API is that every XML implementation is obviously-correct
This is not my experience. Just this week I encountered one that doesn’t decode entity/character references in attribute values <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45826247>, which seems a pretty fundamental error to me.
As for doctypes and especially entities defined in doctypes, they’re not at all reliable across implementations. Exclude doctypes and processing instructions altogether and I’d be more willing to go along with what you said, but “obviously-correct” is still too far.
Past what is strictly the XML parsing layer to the interpretation of documents, things get worse in a way that they can’t with JSON due to its more limited model: when people use event-driven parsing, or even occasionally when they traverse trees, they very frequently fail to understand reasonable documents, due to things like assuming a single text node, ignoring the possibilities of CDATA or comments.
Exactly. In my experience, XML has thousands of ways to trip yourself while JSON is pretty simple. I always choose JSON APIs over XML if given the choice.
Try not to confuse APIs that you are implementing for work to make money, with random "show HN AI slop" somebody made because they are looking for a job.
This is not my experience. Just this week I encountered one that doesn’t decode entity/character references in attribute values <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45826247>, which seems a pretty fundamental error to me.
As for doctypes and especially entities defined in doctypes, they’re not at all reliable across implementations. Exclude doctypes and processing instructions altogether and I’d be more willing to go along with what you said, but “obviously-correct” is still too far.
Past what is strictly the XML parsing layer to the interpretation of documents, things get worse in a way that they can’t with JSON due to its more limited model: when people use event-driven parsing, or even occasionally when they traverse trees, they very frequently fail to understand reasonable documents, due to things like assuming a single text node, ignoring the possibilities of CDATA or comments.