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YAML: Probably not so great after all

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Re: YAML: Probably not so great after all

#11

Post by CameronNemo »

ozten wrote: post #7

Another one: Parsing partial YAML files doesn’t detect an error with loading the complete file. We’ve had a production outage, because of large yaml files getting cutoff and not all settings getting loaded into our server. JSON or XML typically will not parse.

YAML files should have an explicit start point and end point, respectively `---` and `...`. yamllint will enforce this, although I have never used these for integrity checks.

https://yamllint.readthedocs.io/en/stable/rules.html#module-...

Re: YAML: Probably not so great after all

#12

Post by gweinberg »

leoc wrote: post #4

XML is as pleasant to look at or touch as a nettle rash, but it seems it can join ALGOL 60 among the ranks of technologies which were a great improvement on their successors.

Umm, no. You can find cases where JSON sucks, but you have to look for them. You can find cases where XML doesn't suck, but you have to look for them.

Re: YAML: Probably not so great after all

#13

Post by michaelmrose »

gweinberg wrote: post #12
leoc wrote: post #4

XML is as pleasant to look at or touch as a nettle rash, but it seems it can join ALGOL 60 among the ranks of technologies which were a great improvement on their successors.

Umm, no. You can find cases where JSON sucks, but you have to look for them. You can find cases where XML doesn't suck, but you have to look for them.

Other than looking ugly and being a pain to type does xml actually suck?

Re: YAML: Probably not so great after all

#14

Post by fabian2k »

I've used YAML as the format for a config file, and I certainly regret that choice. Trying to explain to someone that doesn't know YAML how to edit it without setting them up for failure is quite annoying. There are too many non-obvious ways to screw up, like forgetting the space after the colon or of course bad indentation.

Re: YAML: Probably not so great after all

#15

Post by vlozko »

I think the author’s conclusion is in line with my own thought: If JSON is the problem, YAML isn’t the solution.

I recall the first time I saw YAML and all I could think to myself was that I have to learn yet another syntax. I find it far less readable than JSON or XML and made me pine for the latter.

Re: YAML: Probably not so great after all

#18

Post by jackfraser »

QuinnyPig wrote: post #3

If the JSON and YAML folks can’t get along, I swear I’ll turn this car around and make you all use XML.

Aren't we just reinventing the wheel, though? Got your structured data format, now you need parsers (tons available for XML, incl SAX, DOM parsers, SimpleXML, Nokogiri...) a schema and validation tools (XSD), a templating mechanism (XSLT), a query language (XPath), ...

JSON was a reaction to the verbosity of XML, but a better reaction would have been to work harder on our text editors so that working with XML would be just as easy as working with JSON in terms of the numbers of keystrokes needed. Better parser interfaces that help you treat the dataformat more like it's part of the language would also help (i.e. SAX and DOMDocument suck to work with, but SimpleXML is almost idiomatic).

Re: YAML: Probably not so great after all

#19

Post by jsjohnst »

michaelmrose wrote: post #13
gweinberg wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm, no. You can find cases where JSON sucks, but you have to look for them. You can find cases where XML doesn't suck, but you have to look for them.

Other than looking ugly and being a pain to type does xml actually suck?

Depends on the XML. When you start mixing in namespaces (like trying to parse Maven pom.xml files in Python), it quickly becomes a mess.

Re: YAML: Probably not so great after all

#20

Post by saghm »

jackfraser wrote: post #18
QuinnyPig wrote: post #3

If the JSON and YAML folks can’t get along, I swear I’ll turn this car around and make you all use XML.

Aren't we just reinventing the wheel, though? Got your structured data format, now you need parsers (tons available for XML, incl SAX, DOM parsers, SimpleXML, Nokogiri...) a schema and validation tools (XSD), a templating mechanism (XSLT), a query language (XPath), ... JSON was a reaction to the verbosity of XML, but a better reaction would have been to work harder on our text editors so that working with XML would b…

> JSON was a reaction to the verbosity of XML, but a better reaction would have been to work harder on our text editors so that working with XML would be just as easy as working with JSON in terms of the numbers of keystrokes needed.

Isn't that only solving half the problem? XML is also pretty difficult to read

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