Some interesting thoughts - and questions - here. Seems you posted them in the wrong place, given the paltry response. Or possibly at the wrong time (i.e. 6 hours after the herd had moved on, a perennial problem with social media).

It isn’t based in XML, and modern devs don’t want to use XML. As I’m not a coder, I cant say how big an influence this has, but from what I have seen it seems to be a substantial factor. Can anyone explain why?

XML is space-inefficient with lots of redundancy, and therefore considered to be ugly. Coders tend to have tidy minds so these things take on an importance that they don't really merit. It's also just fashion: markup, like XML and HTML, is a thing of the 90s, so using them is the coder equivalent of wearing MC Hammer pants.

[–] Coopr8@kbin.earth 3 points 1 day ago

Thanks for clarifying, I figured fashion had at least something to do with it given the number of actively used protocols and services that still use it, XMPP being the one I use the most myself.

Even on XMPP I have seen several projects to "translate" the protocol into other languages (specifically Rust in one).

Efficiency makes sense, but then also the number of devs proficient in a language due to shifts in the emphasis of training and education is just as strong a force.