> Don't you think you are falling for classic whataboutism here?
I do not. This sort of codec complexity can't be avoided. And ASN.1 is NOT "exceptionally bad" -- I rather like ASN.1. The point was not "wait till you see ASN.1", but "wait till you see Kerberos" because Kerberos requires a very large amount of client-side smarts -- too much really because it's got more than 30 years of cruft.
Just because ASN.1 and friends are exceptionally bad, it does not mean that Json Web * cannot be bad also.