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YAML: probably not so great after all (2017)

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

#171

Post by merb »

chx wrote: post #63
clarkevans wrote: post #34

One thing to remember is that YAML is about 20 years old. It was created when XML was at peak popularity. JSON didn't exist (YAML is a parallel, contemporary effort). Even articulating the problems with XML's approach was an uphill battle. What you would replace it with is also hard. What use cases matter? What is the core model? A simple hierarchy? Typed nodes? A graph? What sort of syntax is needed for it to be usa…

Drupal 8 uses YAML* as its configuration language because JSON doesn't support comments. That simple. Thank you for YAML, it does deliver for us: it's human readable and it's easy to parse (see below). * I mean, it uses an ill defined subset of YAML. The definition is "whatever the Symfony YAML parser supports".

well there is also toml and hocon (json supersets) which are "yaml like"

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

#172

Post by chx »

merb wrote: post #171
chx wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drupal 8 uses YAML* as its configuration language because JSON doesn't support comments. That simple. Thank you for YAML, it does deliver for us: it's human readable and it's easy to parse (see below). * I mean, it uses an ill defined subset of YAML. The definition is "whatever the Symfony YAML parser supports".

well there is also toml and hocon (json supersets) which are "yaml like"

TOM: Initial release 23 February 2013; 5 years ago

Drupal 8 file format discussion was in 2011, predating it by two years. https://groups.drupal.org/node/159044

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

#173

Post by [deleted] »

emodendroket wrote: post #140
dagw wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In contrast, JSON is super intuitive and basically self documenting. Personally I've found the exact opposite when dealing with 'normal' people. Most people can get basic YAML, but unless they're a programmers (or at least know how to program) most people fail miserably at writing JSON by hand.

See how much fun these people have trying to figure out why their application crashes because they put a tab instead of spaces into the YAML file.

[deleted]

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

#174

Post by ezrast »

s3m4j wrote: post #23

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.

This is almost always the case with YAML criticism, which is a perennial topic in programming communities. Coming up with "a better YAML" is easy; getting anyone to use it is hard - even harder than getting people to use a new programming language because configuration files have to be touched by end users, and they all know YAML already.

Furthermore, all of the "better YAMLs" that exist solve a different subset of issues based on the whims of the author. I like indentation-based syntax for config files (though not for programming languages, go figure), so half the alternatives look worse rather than better to me, and reasonable people can also disagree on things like when strings should require quotes and what should be a valid hash key and so on. There are so many bikes to shed that I don't see us ever settling on an alternative without major buy-in from one of the big players in tech.

Until then, I'm happy to let YAML win. It's just not broken enough for me to get worked up about.

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

#175

Post by mncharity »

outworlder wrote: post #95
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.

Well, if you go deeper down the rabbit hole, XML was a complete and utter waste of time. This problem was solved in the 60's with S-Expressions.

> This problem was solved in the 60's with S-Expressions.

Not so much. Sexps don't provide a place hang "extra" information. It's been a pain point. While some lisps allowed decorating runtime things (eg objects with attributes, and symbols with property lists), their printed/readable representations were implementation dependent.

There's also a widespread misconception that Scheme is easy to parse. Numbers and all. It's actually very hard to get right. Real scheme parsers are quite large and hairy.

> XML was a complete and utter waste of time.

While XML was ghastly, there was an unmet need. There still is.

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

#176

Post by weberc2 »

dokem wrote: post #145
weberc2 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what sense could this be true? Python objects support a whole host of behavior; JSON is a data format. Python dicts might be a closer analogy except Python keys can be anything that is hashable while JSON requires strings, and of course Python dict values can be any Python value; not just the JSON analogs.

I think you are purposely mis-interpreting me. Python dicts are practically, syntactically identical to JSON. Yes, python dict values can be any python value the same way JSON in JS can be any JS value. Point being, someone coming from python would see JSON as identical to a python dict. We can run around in semantic circles all day.

> I think you are purposely mis-interpreting me.

You misrepresented yourself by saying "object" when you meant "dict" and saying "practically identical" when you meant "vaguely syntactically similar". I wasn't trying to nitpick your semantics; I just had no idea that "Python objects are practically identical to JSON" meant "Python dicts are to Python what JSON objects are to JS, oh and also Python dicts have some syntactic similarlities to JSON" or whatever.

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

#177

Post by joobus »

sho wrote: post #111
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…

> objects can't have a trailing comma This has caused me so much misery in the past, especially since none of the tools will tell you which line the offending comma is on. Great, somewhere in my thousand-plus-line JSON file is a tiny syntax error but you won't tell me where. Ended up having to regex for them. Didn't do wonders for my trust in JS tooling.

From the command line:

    python -m json.tool
This will tell you where your file is messed up.

There is also https://github.com/zaach/jsonlint

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

#178

Post by Zardoz84 »

urda wrote: post #169
Zardoz84 wrote: post #148

No body talks about SDLang (Simple Declarative Language) : https://sdlang.org/ An example : ``` // This is a node with a single string value title "Hello, World" // Multiple values are supported, too bookmarks 12 15 188 1234 // Nodes can have attributes author "Peter Parker" email="peter@example.org" active=true // Nodes can be arbitrarily nested contents { section "First section" { paragraph "This is the first parag…

I have not seen this before, thanks for sharing.

The fact is that is old. I discovered it, seeing the dub build (DLang build&depency tool) files that can use JSON or SDLang.

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

#179

Post by mottosso »

dharmab wrote: post #165
jiveturkey wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> JSON doesn't support comments eh? { "firstName": "John", "lastName": "Smith", "comment": "foo", } I know it isn't the same as #comments, but who cares really.

How do I do something like: { # comment with a note about the value of foo "foo": "bar", # comment with a note about the value of baz "baz": "qux" } Without driving myself and future readers insane with fooComments and bazComments? What if I need a multiline comment explaining a yak-shaving story for why a key is set to a certain value? What if the object in question is a set of keyword arguments, and adding new fiel…

Ok, I'll bite.

  {
    "#": "A foo variable",
    "foo": true,

    "#": "A bar variable",
    "bar": false
  }
Alternatively.

  {
    "# A foo variable": "",
    "foo": true,

    "# A multiline..": "",
    "# .. bar variable": "",
    "bar": false
  }
Presto!

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

#180

Post by tajen »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #85

Years ago I had to support a tool that used YAML as a configuration language, and a transport between different applications. Holy. Hell. First of all, don't ever try to edit a YAML file by hand. You will introduce whitespace or other characters that will break the file, and you will not know until you run it and it breaks something. The reason you will not know? Not all YAML parsers are the same. Some will interpret…

Well your last sentence is the whole point: What is a sensible configuration language? For example what would have been decent for Ansible?
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