Yeah and this is enforced by default in yamllint. It's very fair to cry "why the hell do I need a linter for my trivial config file format", and these footguns

Yeah and this is enforced by default in yamllint. It's very fair to cry "why the hell do I need a linter for my trivial config file format", and these footguns are a valid reason to avoid YAML. But overall YAML's sketchiness is a pretty easy problem to solve and if you have a good reason to keep/choose YAML, and a context where adding a linter is viable, it's not really a big deal IMO. And as hinted in the post, there's really no well-established universal alternative. TOML is a good default but it's only usable for pretty straightforward stuff. I'm personally a fan of the "just use Nix" approach but you can't put a Nix interpreter everywhere. And Cue is way overpowered for most usecases. I guess the tldr is that the takeaway isn't "don't use YAML" but just "beware of YAML footguns, know the alternatives".