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I've been trying to decipher this irrational hatred of YAML coming from a certain subset of developer for years. I've only three or four data points so far, but
by hliyan 8y ago
I've been trying to decipher this irrational hatred of YAML coming from a certain subset of developer for years. I've only three or four data points so far, but all of them were very gifted, opinionated developers who were unable to explain their hatred.
Recently, it began to dawn on me that maybe the problem is one of visual acuity required for discerning whitespaces. I always assumed that just because I could visualize a YAML hierarchy just as well as I could JSON, and could edit YAML without messing up the indentation, that others could too. But I've witnessed highly capable developers bang their heads against the keyboard trying to fix repeated parsing errors in YAML they've written. Perhaps not everyone can pick up whitespaces quite so easily...
- ojosilva 8y agoMy experience failing with YAML: I've converted a visual workflow tool into a YAML file mode so I could give my users a file format they could edit, share and version with any text editor and commit to a git repo. The result was that they were at a loss trying to figure out the free-form map and array structures. They could not grasp when to use dashes (arrays) mixed with maps (array of maps) and would fail to indent structures all the time. Trying to create meaningful error reporting was very hard since their mistakes were also valid YAML. YAML is definitely powerful but can become too complex too fast. And being a format full of sigils and its TIMTOWTDI "there's more than a way to do it" approach can easily enrage lean purists and complexity detractors, hence the hatred.