jq is one of the most intentionally designed pieces of software I've seen. In due time, I expect it to become as ubiquitous and indispensable as ls, grep, sed and awk. The jq language could use a formal spec, but other than that jq has a sublime elegance.
By contrast, this seems like one of the least intentionally designed pieces of CLI software I've seen.
I'm not convinced that I would call this "simpler" than jq.