I used to think json was the best until I found json lines or line delimited json. Thank me later. I use it all the time. You can append until you’re blue in the face. It’s great for log files. Each line is a valid json file.
this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2024
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It's docs are garbage, but the language is quite simple and human readable even for non-techies. I think it's a bit too easy at times, resulting in people just kinda winging it
Somehow it’s clunky to use.
huh?
I find developing GitHub CI in YAML clunky.
I don't find configuring a simple service via YAML config, with a preset showing me and explaining what I can do clunky.
We all know it sucks. I have no idea why people use it instead of anything else. My workday is jammed with fucking ansible which, while also being so ghetto that we were easily doing more with less in 2002, uses So.much.fucking.yaml . Just when you think ansible couldn't get more clunky and useless and slow, it also is configured in yaml.
White space/indentation as a construct of the syntax.
It’s why I have a hard time with python.
People have their likes and dislikes. Nothing wrong with that.
I don't like a thing, fellas. With that being all I've told you, please explain why I don't like that thing.
Following along with the style of your own post: YAML doesn't suck, because I feel so.
Thanks for asking.
YAML had comments and trailing commas, therefore it's objectively better than JSON. If you want a compromise solution that mostly looks like JSON, try JSON5.
It's a rube goldberg footgun
Yaml is fundamentally the same as the json and xml it has mostly replaced (and the toml that didn't manage to replace yaml)... it's a data serialization format and just doesn't have any facility for making abstractions, which are the main tool we human use to deal with complexity.
Abstractions aren't concrete and all of these standards you're referring to are concrete data serialisations. You may be interested in CUE which captures this concept in its design.
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.
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 :)
YAML works great for small config files, or situations where your configuration is fully declarative. Go look at the Kubernetes API with its resources.
People think YAML sucks because everyone loves creating spaghetti config/templates with it.
One reason it tends to become an absolute unholy mess is because people work around the declarative nature of those APIs by shoving imperative code into it. Think complicated Helm charts with little snippets of logic and code all over the place. It just isn't really made for doing that.
It also forces your brain to switch back and forth between the two different paradigms. It doesn't just become hard to read, it becomes hard to reason about.
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