Yes, that's what I mean. Both XML and JSON can ultimately encode everything, but they both do indeed have strengths over the other. The problem with XML isn't that it is a "bad thing" that should never be used, the problem is that it become trendy and people started using it for all sorts of things it shouldn't have been, combined with a healthy dose of it being used by a lot of people who didn't even understand XML. (XML isn't that complicated, but there's more to it that "tags, attributes, and text".) When you're in a domain where XML really should be used, you're going to regret trying to jam JSON into that domain.

Also, side observation, that Lisp-like encoding is pretty icky as-is (deciding if something is a tag or text by how deep the array is?), and gets worse if the XML uses attributes.

That's Python. In Lisp it looks like:

'(foo "Some text" (bar "more text"))

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think you could get away with:

I don't think your second example is much at all like Lisp and I think to actually achieve something lispy, JSON would need some kind of symbol type, so you can do:

  ['Foo, ['Some Text', ['Bar, 'more text']]]

Though, mix in attributes, and it's just a nightmare.

After all, it's not like:

  '(Foo "Some text" (Bar "more text"))

Or with an admittedly not-very-well-thought-out attribute:

  '(Foo "Some text" (Bar ([] (name "Baz")) "more text"))

For:

  <Foo>Some text <Bar name="Baz">more text</Bar></Foo>

Though there may be a better way of representing attributes....