I would disagree that JSON is more readable than STON, if only for that fact that all keys have to be quoted in JSON, but I agree with the rest of your comment.
TestDomainObject {
#created : DateAndTime [ '2012-02-14T16:40:15+01:00' ],
#modified : DateAndTime [ '2012-02-14T16:40:18+01:00' ],
#integer : 39581,
#float : 73.84789359463944,
#description : 'This is a test',
#color : #green,
#tags : [
#two,
#beta,
#medium
],
#bytes : ByteArray [ 'afabfdf61d030f43eb67960c0ae9f39f' ],
#boolean : false
}Admittedly, Python, Bash, Perl, and Ruby use # for comments, so you do have a point, especially since Python is such a common teaching language.
(For anyone confused by the mention of graphic design: it's all about communicating information through visuals.)
\begin{pedantry}
I'd argue that an untrained eye would take the # for ordinary syntax noise, since such an eye would have no notion of a "comment". A trained eye might be confused by that, but only if it was trained against an environment that uses # for comments.
\end{pedantry}