3 ms·

I’ve never liked YAML. For whatever reason, it always feels like working in a mine field. It comes from the same cargo cult of people who think the problem with

I’ve never liked YAML. For whatever reason, it always feels like working in a mine field. It comes from the same cargo cult of people who think the problem with human machine formats is that it needs to be “clean”. Clean, of course to them means some bizarre aesthetic notion of removing as much as possible. Only it’s taken to an extreme. I wonder if the same people also think books would be better with all punctuation be removed to make it look “clean”? It’s unhealthy minimalism, causes more problems than it solves. As soon as I see a project using YAML I cringe and try to find an alternative because god knows what other poor choices the developer has made. In that sense, YAML can be considered a red herring and I’m usually right. The last project I used that adopted an overly complex and build-breaking YAML configuration syntax had other problems hiding under the covers, and in some cases couldn’t parse it’s own syntax due to YAML’s overly broad but at the same time opinionated syntax. Just say no to YAML.

politelemon 5y ago
I've often heard this argument about YAML being "clean", but over time I have realized that they are conflating minimalism with cleaninless, when they are two different things. That realization is what it took for me to realize why I didn't like it. I did _not_ find it clean, I found it "messy" by virtue of the increased cognitive overhead. But it is minimal at least compared to other formats. Other formats appear cleaner to me.
DonHopkins 5y ago
By its very name (and the fact that the MEANING of the name flip-flopped in mid-flight after launch) you can tell that the designers of YAML had no clue what they were doing, because originally they named it "YAML" for "Yet Another Markup Language", when it clearly was NOT a markup language. Only AFTER YAML had been around and in use for a few years did those geniuses actually realize that they had made a mistake in naming it something that it's not, and retroactively changed the name "YAML" to mean "YAML Ain't Markup Language", which was a too clever by half way of whitewashing the fact that they originally CLAIMED it was "Yet Another Markup Language", since they had no idea what a markup language actually was. I prefer to use markup languages and data definition languages that were designed by people who are situationally aware enough to know what the difference between a markup language and a data definition language is, please. Hard pass on YAML, whatever it stands for this week.

politelemon 5y ago

I've often heard this argument about YAML being "clean", but over time I have realized that they are conflating minimalism with cleaninless, when they are two different things. That realization is what it took for me to realize why I didn't like it. I did _not_ find it clean, I found it "messy" by virtue of the increased cognitive overhead. But it is minimal at least compared to other formats. Other formats appear cleaner to me.

DonHopkins 5y ago

By its very name (and the fact that the MEANING of the name flip-flopped in mid-flight after launch) you can tell that the designers of YAML had no clue what they were doing, because originally they named it "YAML" for "Yet Another Markup Language", when it clearly was NOT a markup language. Only AFTER YAML had been around and in use for a few years did those geniuses actually realize that they had made a mistake in naming it something that it's not, and retroactively changed the name "YAML" to mean "YAML Ain't Markup Language", which was a too clever by half way of whitewashing the fact that they originally CLAIMED it was "Yet Another Markup Language", since they had no idea what a markup language actually was. I prefer to use markup languages and data definition languages that were designed by people who are situationally aware enough to know what the difference between a markup language and a data definition language is, please. Hard pass on YAML, whatever it stands for this week.