By "dumb", I mean it's simple - almost as simple as it gets. I don't like YAML - it's more complicated than JSON in all the bad ways[0]. By "annoying" I mean the experience of using it in languages other than JavaScript, especially in statically-typed ones. I guess it's true for all such data formats - XML, YAML and s-exps are also going to create the same kind of type-related pain. By "overused" I mean, it's used too often in places where it shouldn't be[1], adding to software inefficiency and bloat at every layer.

But my point is, none of that is actually hard. It's just stupid, annoying drudgework.

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[0] - Optimizing too much for looking "nice" to humans, by means of removing affordances that make the precise structure obvious. It's particularly apparent when you try to write some, and the document grows beyond screenful of lines in length, and 2-3 levels in depth.

[1] - There are many, many examples of JSON being used where a more streamlined text format, or a binary format, would be a better fit. One that comes to my mind and annoys me to no end, is when people encode large amounts of time series data in JSON, in a format like [{"x" : "123", "y" : "456"}, ...]. The data set becomes easily 10x the size it should be, 20-30x if it's not minified. Sure computers are fast and all, but I've long suspected - and recently seen some articles confirming - that at this point, software is often no longer IO-bound, but CPU-bound, and mostly on parsers.