Comment by mpyne

The thing is, JSON is even superior in C++.

It's a dumber format but that makes it a better lingua franca between all sorts of programming languages, not just Javascript, especially if you haven't locked in on a schema.

Once you have locked in on a schema and IDL-style tooling to autogenerate adapter classes/objects, then non-JSON interchange formats become viable (if not superior). But even in that world, I'd rather have something like gRPC over XML.