This is almost always the case with YAML criticism, which is a perennial topic in programming communities. Coming up with "a better YAML" is easy; getting anyon

This is almost always the case with YAML criticism, which is a perennial topic in programming communities. Coming up with "a better YAML" is easy; getting anyone to use it is hard - even harder than getting people to use a new programming language because configuration files have to be touched by end users, and they all know YAML already. Furthermore, all of the "better YAMLs" that exist solve a different subset of issues based on the whims of the author. I like indentation-based syntax for config files (though not for programming languages, go figure), so half the alternatives look worse rather than better to me, and reasonable people can also disagree on things like when strings should require quotes and what should be a valid hash key and so on. There are so many bikes to shed that I don't see us ever settling on an alternative without major buy-in from one of the big players in tech. Until then, I'm happy to let YAML win. It's just not broken enough for me to get worked up about.