Yeah, just because it can do that doesn't mean that it is good design.

It is the design of JSON! Which is a reflection of the same dynamic typing choice made in the original design of Javascript.

They, uh, still aren't wrong hah.

Tell me again why we somehow standardized on sending the equivalent of JSObject.toString() for everything? Especially when "standardized" isn't

how would you represent an arbitrary JSON array in python then? A potentially heterogeneous list seems the obvious solution.

Why would I want to do that? I'm rarely ingesting arbitrary JSON. Rather I'm designing my data structures in a sensible way and then maybe serializing them to JSON. Just because JSON can represent heterogenous lists doesn't mean it is a good idea to use heterogenous lists in my programs.

The JSON spec does not require a schema. If you want to write a library that can support any valid JSON you have little options. That's useful if you are implementing something like jq just to give an example.