I can understand this for "small" data, say less than 10 Mb.
In bioinformatics, basically all of the file formats are human-readable/text based. And file sizes range between 1-2Mb and 1 Tb. I regularly encounter 300-600 Gb files.
In this context, human-readable files are ridiculously inefficient, on every axis you can think of (space, parsing, searching, processing, etc.). It's a GD crime against efficiency.
And at that scale, "readable" has no value, since it would take you longer to read the file than 10 lifetimes.
In bioinformatics, basically all of the file formats are human-readable/text based. And file sizes range between 1-2Mb and 1 Tb. I regularly encounter 300-600 Gb files.
In this context, human-readable files are ridiculously inefficient, on every axis you can think of (space, parsing, searching, processing, etc.). It's a GD crime against efficiency.
And at that scale, "readable" has no value, since it would take you longer to read the file than 10 lifetimes.