You have to translate your strings to binaries before you try to encode to JSON. A JSON encoder has no way of determining whether it should be encoding an array or a string without this. Instead of one string type, you have "strings" and <<"strings">>, and due to the lack of typing, it is actually pretty tough to keep track of which one you have. It also is an exercise in finger acrobatics to <<>> all your strings.

JSON doesn't solve every problem. It does solve the problem, quite elegantly, of creating a 'endianless' interchange format that is easily consumed, constructed, and debugged.