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Comment by hcarvalhoalves | Hacker News Reader

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hcarvalhoalves·

Also worth looking are EDN [0] (mentioned briefly under S-Expressions), Transit [1] and Fressian [2][3].

[0] https://github.com/edn-format/edn

[1] https://github.com/cognitect/transit-format

[2] https://github.com/Datomic/fressian/wiki

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JArZqMqsaB0&ab_channel=Cloju...

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Yeah, the author didn’t specify why he thought EDN wasn’t more than “a good start.” I’m curious what it’s missing!

If you follow the link, you'll see that there are no examples of data in the format and the README declares things like that it will provide a BNF when the specification ready. The context seems to imply that it is in an early implementation stage and not ready for non-enthusiast consumption. Also, last updated in 2014.

EDN has a few limitations regarding encoding custom types (tagged literals), and also performance in general. I understand both Transit and Fressian are possible evolutions addressing these points.

What's missing is major projects using it I think. Note how for every example he lists the big players keeping it alive.

From recollection it’s the native data transmission format for Datomic (which is driven by Cognitect/Nubank). I think there is a little bit more to the bias’ of EDN (mostly driven by language preferences in this case).

I would love edn if it was viable as a standalone format. In practice, programming in clojure it's plain JSON vs transit vs fressian. I tend to go with just JSON.

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