I agree with your point here (but I'm not the GP). The main thrust of the article is about finding product/market fit, and it could be said here that the market isn't the parser writers, who would be disrupted, but the developers who want a JSON format with better ergonomics.
> And if I happen to be consuming an API I don't control which for God knows what reason decided to move to json5
And such a decision might be the API maintainers not understanding their users.
It's no longer better ergonomics if you can't use it at all because half your endpoints don't support it, and the reason they don't support it is not mere neutral time or popularity but a result of the fact that the new form no longer posesses the qualities that made the original form useful.
This really does look like a case of missing a point and proceeding with a bad idea that results in an all around increase in harm, because no matter the idea, there will always be at least a few adopters and then everyone else has to deal with it.
If it's allowed for anyone to come up with any new idea they want, then it has to be equally allowed for others to criticize. Anything else is literally not sane.
It's perfectly likely the "haters" are right and the idea is bad and should not be adopted or proliferate. It's also possible they are merely unthinking haters.
But calling them "haters" is not a valid defense of the idea.
> If it's allowed for anyone to come up with any new idea they want, then it has to be equally allowed for others to criticize.
Never disputed this.
> It's no longer better ergonomics if you can't use it at all because half your endpoints don't support it
Incompatibility != lack of ergonomics. People use new and incompatible frameworks all the time. It could be argued that JSON had better ergonomics at a time when XML was more popular, in spite of impedance mismatch with other APIs. Similar could be said of what's happening with python 3 vs python 2 the last decade. How do standards improve without breaking anything?
> But calling them "haters" is not a valid defense of the idea.
From reading the article, it seems like people were particularly cruel, well beyond constructive criticism into straight up ridicule:
> But he went even further: Mitchell took the time to make a parody project of JSON5 [..] even making fun of me by name.
OP was gracious about it however:
> I reached out to Mitchell as part of writing this post [..] I assumed he regretted it in retrospect, and I harbored no grudge or ill will towards him.
> Mitchell confirmed this assumption to be true and offered a genuine, sincere apology. Thank you, Mitchell — I appreciated that a lot.
He doesn't appear to take personal affront, so I think his use of the term 'haters' is playful, but I think also fair when you consider that even those mocking them felt bad about their conduct.
> And if I happen to be consuming an API I don't control which for God knows what reason decided to move to json5
And such a decision might be the API maintainers not understanding their users.