https://www.reddit.com/r/plaintextaccounting/comments/1puaba6/whats_your_favorite_pta_software/
A new poll. Beancount doing well!
hledger's JSON output is reliable and useful. But It's quite complicated and requires significant time and effort to do something with it without making a lot of assumptions.
Not that it's hledger's problem. It actually shows how meticulously thought out hledger is.
I've rarely used it myself, but I agree that hledger's current JSON output is complicated and hard to work with. It prioritises accurate non-lossy representation, to suit the needs of mobile/GUI apps. There ought to be (additionally?) a more user-friendly JSON representation.