YAML: probably not so great after all (2017) • Hacker News Board

Re: YAML: probably not so great after all (2017)

#21

Post by rout39574 » Wed, Jun 20, 2018, 6:49 PM UTC

nawgszy wrote: post #10

tootie wrote: post #2

We've spent like 10 years trying to fill in gaps left when we all decided to hate XML. JSON is great as a lightweight DIF between trusted partners. If you care about maintenance and safety, XML with XSD is rock solid.

What is a DIF?

Data Interchange Format

Re: YAML: probably not so great after all (2017)

#22

Post by 49bc » Wed, Jun 20, 2018, 6:49 PM UTC

I don't love YAML, but for configurations I always choose it for the simple fact that it supports comments. Comments for json are almost always hacky (for example, imbedding a comment key inside the value).

Re: YAML: probably not so great after all (2017)

#23

Post by s3m4j » Wed, Jun 20, 2018, 6:50 PM UTC

Not agreeing or disagreeing, but I read both this and his other post about JSON as configuration file and I have not seen him propose and argue for an alternative.

Re: YAML: probably not so great after all (2017)

#24

Post by Rapzid » Wed, Jun 20, 2018, 6:50 PM UTC

jwr wrote: post #16

I never understood what it is that people like about YAML. I keep configuration in EDN, which avoids all of the problems described in the article and has other advantages, too.

EDN is fantastic. It wasn't super portable last I looked though.

Re: YAML: probably not so great after all (2017)

#25

Post by jrochkind1 » Wed, Jun 20, 2018, 6:50 PM UTC

> Are you sure that every YAML parser will treat foo:bar as a string, or 0x42 as the integer 42, etc.?

Definitely not. I'd expect 0x42 to be 66. (Not kidding, if 0x42 means hex notation!).

Point taken.

Re: YAML: probably not so great after all (2017)

#26

Post by dorfsmay » Wed, Jun 20, 2018, 6:51 PM UTC

Alex3917 wrote: post #6

With YAML I can never remember what's an object versus a list, string, or number, nor am I ever able to add new stuff to a YAML file and get it to parse correctly without first looking up the spec. And it's impossible to see where large objects start and end. In contrast, JSON is super intuitive and basically self documenting. The only real quirks are that you need to use double quotes, and objects can't have a trail…

You use JavaScript a lot more than python, right?

Intuitive usually means "close to what I'm used to".

Re: YAML: probably not so great after all (2017)

#27

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 20, 2018, 6:52 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: YAML: probably not so great after all (2017)

#28

Post by minimaxir » Wed, Jun 20, 2018, 6:52 PM UTC

Semirandom question: what's the proper file extension for a YAML file?

I've done informal polls on it and every time it's an even split between .yaml and .yml

Re: YAML: probably not so great after all (2017)

#29

Post by tptacek » Wed, Jun 20, 2018, 6:52 PM UTC

tootie wrote: post #2

We've spent like 10 years trying to fill in gaps left when we all decided to hate XML. JSON is great as a lightweight DIF between trusted partners. If you care about maintenance and safety, XML with XSD is rock solid.

XML has many of the same security problems that YAML does, and even some additional ones.

Re: YAML: probably not so great after all (2017)

#30

Post by klodolph » Wed, Jun 20, 2018, 6:52 PM UTC

jameslk wrote: post #9

tootie wrote: post #2

We've spent like 10 years trying to fill in gaps left when we all decided to hate XML. JSON is great as a lightweight DIF between trusted partners. If you care about maintenance and safety, XML with XSD is rock solid.

My biggest complaint with JSON is the lack of support for comments. For that reason, it's hard to take it seriously for human-maintained configurations.

Comments and trailing commas. If those two features were added, I would use JSON for configuring everything. Naked keys would be a distant third. My conclusion is to use TOML or the protocol buffer text format.

I've been slowly ripping out YAML support and converting configurations to TOML.