Comment by xtiansimon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xtiansimon | Hacker News Reader

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> “For a whole class of people, checking a key in a json object might be as complex and difficult as creating a compiler.”

Ugg. I think this is me. I’m self taught (never once made a compiler in a course or class) and making scripts for ETL at work mostly from CSV input. And JSON/APIs are aggravating to me.

I’ve yet to see the Matrix in JSON data structures (Is it storage? Is it wire protocol?). I can follow _examples_ in documentation, but struggle to put parts together from Swagger or some documentation to get the data view I need. For a while I thought some kind of UML diagramming projects would do it for me—to see the Forest and the trees—but the answer was not there.

So, yes, if I can “vibe” code with ChatIA to get over the mental structural hump to make the right joins and calls, I’m all in.

https://docs.clover.com/dev/docs/making-rest-api-calls

https://api.mobilebytes.com/

> Is it storage? Is it wire protocol?

Yes.

It's just a standardised way to represent data structures in text. You can then save that text to a file for storage, or send the text over the wire for data transfer. As long as everyone involved knows they're saving/loading or talking JSON then everyone knows exactly how to read/write the data.

It is a very literal representation of (specifically JavaScript, but generally any) data-structures in text.

Right. Now the problem for me is these structures don’t come with maps. They’re also like relational databases. If you have to add the mixin calls, how do you got them all? Or know you’ve reconstructed the data model correctly? Where’s the blueprint?

> Where’s the blueprint?

A JSON Schema file that can be directly linked in your .JSON file!

But otherwise it's the same way you know anything. Documentation and trial and error

> "...otherwise it's the same way you know anything."

Not anymore. Now I can harangue ChatAI to explain it to me, and fill-in gaps in my JS knowledge at the same time.

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