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> And if you still think it's bad anyways, you can always improve on it. But very few actually want to put on the enormous amount of work needed to improve YAML

> And if you still think it's bad anyways, you can always improve on it. But very few actually want to put on the enormous amount of work needed to improve YAML or create a new language. The issue is less about putting in the work to create a new language, it's about convincing a significant chunk of an ecosystem to use that new langauge. > IMO if there was something that was substantially better, we would see projects switching to it in a heartbeat. Switching costs are non-zero and can block a switch. ie: Helm charts are built on YAML and gotmpl, even though JSON is also an option. I can make a fairly compelling argument that Helm would be better with JSON and JSonnet, but that ignores a huge amount of investment in existing Helm charts. Whatever benefits are there would be swamped by the cost in terms of additional complexity and potential porting costs.

thinkmassive 3y ago
This is spot on. My brief exposure to Jsonnet made me realize how superior it can be, especially for k8s manifests. Unfortunately the learning curve is steep, to the point that I've held off on attempting to introduce it anywhere new. Recently I discovered kpt (https://kpt.dev/ https://kpt.dev/), which attempts to improve the k8s manifest situation and seems to have a lot of good ideas. Considering how long it's been under development though, it may also never catch on among mainstream k8s users. Grafana recently switched their dashboard DSL to one based on Cue. I haven't yet dug into learning it, but it seems potentially even more powerful than Jsonnet. They also have the advantages of a much smaller audience (relative to k8s manifests) and of putting in the work up front to define the new language and a sample implementation (useful out of the box), not to mention making it a requirement going forward.
- thinkmassive 3y ago
  I suppose where I was going with all that is: hopefully, as people are exposed to superior solutions within a smaller context, they might be open to considering similar alternatives for other purposes.

thinkmassive 3y ago

This is spot on. My brief exposure to Jsonnet made me realize how superior it can be, especially for k8s manifests. Unfortunately the learning curve is steep, to the point that I've held off on attempting to introduce it anywhere new. Recently I discovered kpt (https://kpt.dev/ https://kpt.dev/), which attempts to improve the k8s manifest situation and seems to have a lot of good ideas. Considering how long it's been under development though, it may also never catch on among mainstream k8s users. Grafana recently switched their dashboard DSL to one based on Cue. I haven't yet dug into learning it, but it seems potentially even more powerful than Jsonnet. They also have the advantages of a much smaller audience (relative to k8s manifests) and of putting in the work up front to define the new language and a sample implementation (useful out of the box), not to mention making it a requirement going forward.

thinkmassive 3y ago
I suppose where I was going with all that is: hopefully, as people are exposed to superior solutions within a smaller context, they might be open to considering similar alternatives for other purposes.