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Why YAML sucks? (programming.dev)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I feel that Yaml sucks. I understand the need for such markup language but I think it sucks. Somehow it's clunky to use. Can you explain why?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

JSON and YAML aren't the same as XML. The attribute/child distinction in XML, and the fact that every object has a tag name associated with it, make it a PITA to map into the data primitives of any programming language I know.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Yes, XML is different than JSON and YAML, but it's not particularly easier or harder to manually read/edit than JSON or YAML are (IMO the are all a pain, each in its own way).

If you want to look at it from the programmer's side (which is not what OP was talking about)... marshalling/unmarshalling has been a solved issue for at least 20yrs now :) just have a library do it for you (do map json/yaml properties to you objects manually?).

You don't need to worry about attributes/child elements: <person name="jack" /> and <person><name>jack</name></person> will work the same (ok, this may depend on what language/library you pick - the lib I used back in the day worked either way).

If anything, the issue with XML is all the unnecessarily complicated stuff they added to its "core" (eg. CDATA, namespaces, non-standalone documents, ...) and all the unnecessarily complicated technologies/standards they developed around XML (from Xinclude to SOAP and many others)... but just ignore that BS (like the rest of the world does) and you'll mostly be fine :)