5 ms·

You are using YAML already. How much do you care about best practices. Only partially kidding here.

EdwardDiego 6y ago
You're currently being downvoted, but I agree, YAML is kinda terrible, not sure why anyone thought Python's syntactically relevant whitespace was ideal for a config file. Classic example: - containerPort: 7173 name: http I think that's an object in a list? But it's not overly clear.And if I indented any of those lines wrong...
- corty 6y ago
  also, keywords of the underlying software mechanisms are decoupled, so uncheckable for plain YAML tooling. Whereas with XML you can at least infer a lot about the desired structure and keywords from the schema. Deeper checks are only possible with "real" programming languages, preferrably statically typed ones. I'm wondering when that wisdom trickles down to configuration languages.
- dmitriid 6y ago
  Don't forget the plethora of truthy values that put Javascript to shame. - country: NO Of course it's boolean
  - riffraff 6y ago
    that was changed in YAML 1.2[0], which I think is many years old, but people don't specify a version on config files anyway and I'm not even sure most parsers respect it, so it keeps popping up, which is sad. [0] https://yaml.org/spec/1.2/spec.html#id2803629 https://yaml.org/spec/1.2/spec.html#id2803629
    - dmitriid 6y ago
      That's the problem with bad formats: they live forever. They and any number of parsers for any version between version 0 and now.
- pydry 6y ago
  >not sure why anyone thought Python's syntactically relevant whitespace was ideal for a config file. Because it reduces syntactic noise and increases informational density. Most other serialization formats end up putting in indentation anyway to make them readable (JSON, TOML).
- aliswe 6y ago
  That's a map as a list element, iirc the terminology. But check out this. When studying the Yaml spec I discovered that a map property (key: value) can have not only a string as its key, but any value. Even a list. (cue screams)
  - shahsyed 6y ago
    Here's another reason why YAML is bad: the fact that I have to read the spec to figure out what's going on. It should have been fairly simple to do this. Why do I have to know the difference between ":" and "=" ...?
  - Already__Taken 6y ago
    Why didn't anyone learn from CSS when we all made pre-processors like stylus, less and sass that added white-space sensitivity. It's not great. I thought HCL was one of the best attempts at a terse config language. Shortening foo { bar { bazz {} }} to foo bar baz{} cleans up plenty.
corty 6y ago
YAML is unusable without a sufficiently capable linter. Syntax is very fragile and completely decoupled from function.
shahsyed 6y ago
You're partially kidding but you're 100% right. Someone in another thread mentioned using some LISP or LISP-like language to solve this problem. Would something like TOML make things better here? What would have been the solution?
- pjmlp 6y ago
  XML, but I guess I won't get many friends for asserting that.
  - secondcoming 6y ago
    Nope. Json has schema validation too, and every language has a json parser
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      JSON doesn't do comments.
      - secondcoming 6y ago
        Not officially, but it's fakeable
        pjmlp 6y ago
        Which for me is a design smell, why bother with workarounds when XML already offers me all the best tooling out of the box.
        secondcoming 6y ago
        For me, xml is just too much, and when working with C or C++ (not t sure about rust) it's just a pain. Can your json schema file not serve as the documentation?
        6y ago

You're currently being downvoted, but I agree, YAML is kinda terrible, not sure why anyone thought Python's syntactically relevant whitespace was ideal for a config file. Classic example: - containerPort: 7173 name: http I think that's an object in a list? But it's not overly clear.And if I indented any of those lines wrong...

corty 6y ago
also, keywords of the underlying software mechanisms are decoupled, so uncheckable for plain YAML tooling. Whereas with XML you can at least infer a lot about the desired structure and keywords from the schema. Deeper checks are only possible with "real" programming languages, preferrably statically typed ones. I'm wondering when that wisdom trickles down to configuration languages.
dmitriid 6y ago
Don't forget the plethora of truthy values that put Javascript to shame. - country: NO Of course it's boolean
- riffraff 6y ago
  that was changed in YAML 1.2[0], which I think is many years old, but people don't specify a version on config files anyway and I'm not even sure most parsers respect it, so it keeps popping up, which is sad. [0] https://yaml.org/spec/1.2/spec.html#id2803629 https://yaml.org/spec/1.2/spec.html#id2803629
  - dmitriid 6y ago
    That's the problem with bad formats: they live forever. They and any number of parsers for any version between version 0 and now.
pydry 6y ago
>not sure why anyone thought Python's syntactically relevant whitespace was ideal for a config file. Because it reduces syntactic noise and increases informational density. Most other serialization formats end up putting in indentation anyway to make them readable (JSON, TOML).
aliswe 6y ago
That's a map as a list element, iirc the terminology. But check out this. When studying the Yaml spec I discovered that a map property (key: value) can have not only a string as its key, but any value. Even a list. (cue screams)
- shahsyed 6y ago
  Here's another reason why YAML is bad: the fact that I have to read the spec to figure out what's going on. It should have been fairly simple to do this. Why do I have to know the difference between ":" and "=" ...?
- Already__Taken 6y ago
  Why didn't anyone learn from CSS when we all made pre-processors like stylus, less and sass that added white-space sensitivity. It's not great. I thought HCL was one of the best attempts at a terse config language. Shortening foo { bar { bazz {} }} to foo bar baz{} cleans up plenty.

corty 6y ago

YAML is unusable without a sufficiently capable linter. Syntax is very fragile and completely decoupled from function.

shahsyed 6y ago

You're partially kidding but you're 100% right. Someone in another thread mentioned using some LISP or LISP-like language to solve this problem. Would something like TOML make things better here? What would have been the solution?

pjmlp 6y ago
XML, but I guess I won't get many friends for asserting that.
- secondcoming 6y ago
  Nope. Json has schema validation too, and every language has a json parser
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    JSON doesn't do comments.
    - secondcoming 6y ago
      Not officially, but it's fakeable
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        Which for me is a design smell, why bother with workarounds when XML already offers me all the best tooling out of the box.
        secondcoming 6y ago
        For me, xml is just too much, and when working with C or C++ (not t sure about rust) it's just a pain. Can your json schema file not serve as the documentation?
        6y ago