Funny to see awkward array in this context! (And... do people really store giant datasets in json?!?).

Often the legacy of an engineer (or team) who "did what they had to do" to meet a deadline, and if they wanted to migrate to something better post-launch, weren't allowed to allocate time to go back and do so.

At least JSON or CSV is better than the ad hoc homegrown formats you found at medium-sized companies that came out of the 90's and 00's.

Some people even use AI-generated JSON as a semantic layer over their SQL.

My sweet summer child