> Having two very similar string-like things is unnecessarily complex for little (no?) benefit in return.
Using symbols (or :keywords) and strings together offers many benefits:
1. Like with JSON's richer syntax for aggregates, omitting the "" makes for much easier visual parsing. Especially if symbols are usually used for keys.
2. Symbols may be suitable for interning, perhaps into a set used to validate input data. Strings usually aren't.
3. Most importantly, with this distinction, symbols can be imbued with particular semantics: they can be commands, references, lookup keys, whatever the program needs. Strings are just data, usually to be displayed somewhere to be read by someone, or to be parsed by something nasty like an interpreter.
The most human-readable data notation I know of is EDN. It combines the best of JSON and s-expressions.
Using symbols (or :keywords) and strings together offers many benefits:
1. Like with JSON's richer syntax for aggregates, omitting the "" makes for much easier visual parsing. Especially if symbols are usually used for keys.
2. Symbols may be suitable for interning, perhaps into a set used to validate input data. Strings usually aren't.
3. Most importantly, with this distinction, symbols can be imbued with particular semantics: they can be commands, references, lookup keys, whatever the program needs. Strings are just data, usually to be displayed somewhere to be read by someone, or to be parsed by something nasty like an interpreter.
The most human-readable data notation I know of is EDN. It combines the best of JSON and s-expressions.