> If you need complex data structures use YAML YAML is a poorly engineered format. It doesn't think about storage at all, for example (i.e. in its definition,

> If you need complex data structures use YAML YAML is a poorly engineered format. It doesn't think about storage at all, for example (i.e. in its definition, it's just a single text blob. What if you need to split it? The format is awful for random access: you need to read the whole thing to extract a single data item. If you need to query such a configuration multiple times you'll do a lot of unnecessary work. YAML poorly defines numerical types (how many digits can a float have? what about integers? Are floats and integers the same thing?) YAML lists... allow mixed types. Not sure it's such a good thing from performance and correctness perspective. YAML has unnecessary "hash-table" type. Hash-tables aren't a data format, they require function in the reader that makes asymptotic properties of hash-tables work. In fact, YAML has just a weird sub-type of list, where elements come in pairs. Since it inherited all this from JSON, there's also the ambiguity related to repeated keys in such hash-tables -- what should an application do with those nobody knows. YAML sucks for transmission due to the ambiguity caused by repeated keys in "hash-tables". You cannot stream such a format if you have the policy that the last key wins or if you have the policy that repetition is not allowed. Also, since YAML allows references but doesn't require that the reference lexically point to a previously defined element, you may have unresolved references which, again, will prevent you from streaming. YAML defines mappings to "native" elements of different other languages... but what should you do if you are parsing it in Ruby, but get a mapping to Python? YAML schema sucks. It would require a separate "expose" to describe why. YAML comes with no concept of users or namespaces which would be necessary for ownership / secure sharing of information. It also comes without triggers which would allow an application to respond to changes in data. YAML is very hard to parse for no reason. It's very easy to make a typo in YAML that will not make it invalid, but will be interpreted contrary to what was intended. YAML doesn't have a canoncial form which makes comparing two elements a non-trivial and in some cases undefined task. YAML doesn't have variables, nor does it have forall / exists functionality. This results in a lot of tools that work with YAML overlaying it with yet another layer of configuration, which includes variables (eg. Helm charts, Ansible playbooks). ---- I mean, honestly, people who created YAML probably saw it as an inconsequential, sketchy project that should take maybe a weekend or two. They didn't plan for this format to be the best... they just made something... that sort of did something... but not really. I have no idea why something like this received the acclaim that it did.