Comment by zzo38computer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zzo38computer | Hacker News Reader

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I think that JSON is overused (DER is better), but even without JSON, string data is also overused, in cases where numbers or other types would do better. (Unicode string types are also overused, but if a different type other than strings is better anyways, then Unicode is not the main issue here anyways.)

> If you're using a strongly typed language like TypeScript, receiving the user object as any or unknown type is unfortunate. You'll lose all the type safety and you can only regain it with manual type checking.

This is not specific to "stringly typed" stuff or to JSON, but is just the case when you transfer data that may use multiple types. In strongly typed programming languages, your program can parse it as the data that it expects and use an error handler when it is not what it is expected. (If you do expect that it may have any type, then you might be able to pass the unparsed value if appropriate; for example, I have a ASN1_Value structure in some of my C programs for this purpose.)

> I think that JSON is overused (DER is better)

When I was younger and more enthusiastic about some aspects of network communications, I set out to understand ASN.1 by reading the specifications. That was when ISO and ITU-T were even more stingy with access to their standards/recommendations, so it wasn't easy to get them as someone with no connection to standards bodies, and also without a few hundred CHF to spare. Reading those specs is an art in itself, but one gets a hang of it after a while. It went pretty well until this part of X.208:

The resulting type and value of an instance of use of the new value notation is determined by the value (and the type of the value) finally assigned to the distinguished local reference identified by the keyword VALUE, according to the processing of the macrodefinition for the new type notation followed by that for the new value notation.

That's where I burst out laughing and finally deeply understood why the ISO networking stack crashed and burned despite having some solid ideas.

All this is to point out that yes, DER is not bad at all, but the whole infrastructure it rests on is simply too alien to people outside of telecom space and those who have to deal with it by necessity because of its use in various security protocols.

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