[djedr]

What if we could have minimal redundancy and still be capable of error detection?

Check this[0] out:

    [
        id [0003]
        type [donut]
        name [Old Fashioned]
        ppu [0.55]
        batters [
            batter [
                [
                    id [1001]
                    type [Regular]
                ]
            ]
        ]
        topping [
            [
                id [5004]
                type [Maple]
            ]
        ]
    ]

Now if we delete `id` we will get a syntax error. And yet no commas, no colons, no quotemarks! Only square brackets. Minimal redundancy.

For a bit more error-checking-thru-redundancy we could analyze indentation (one reason why I recommend C-style rather than Lisp-style formatting) and warn if we detect any inconsistencies.

Ergo: through design magic we can get rid of a lot of the redundancy and increase desirable properties, without trading off much of the positive side.

NB for a machine we could compact the above into:

    [id[0003]type[donut]name[Old Fashioned]ppu[0.55]batters[batter[[id[1001]type[Regular]]]]topping[[id[5004]type[Maple]]]]

[0] More on that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35675811