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Why are we templating YAML? (2019)

leebriggs.co.uk

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Re: Why are we templating YAML? (2019)

#101

Post by __jonas »

armchairhacker wrote: post #38

To me YAML seems like the CoffeeScript of JSON, and unlike CoffeeScript I don’t understand why people are still using it. I guess XML and JSON are too verbose. But YAML is so far in the opposite direction, we get the same surprise conversions we’ve had in Excel ( https://ruudvanasseldonk.com/2023/01/11/the-yaml-document-fr... ). Why is “on” a boolean literal (of course so are “true”, “false”, as well as “yes”, “no”,…

In general I am always confused that it lets you use strings unquoted, which is what allows for all these issues with ambiguity of the interpreted data type, Norway problem and all that.

It also just looks odd to me, I don't see why it's necessary to allow this.

Re: Why are we templating YAML? (2019)

#102

Post by sigwinch28 »

throwaway143829 wrote: post #2

This article made me think it'd be nice to generate k8s JSON using TypeScript. Just a node script that runs console.log(JSON.stringify(config)), and you pipe that to a yaml file in your deploy script. The syntax seems more sane and has more broad appeal than jsonnet, and I'd wager that the dev tooling would be better given good enough typings. By the way the answer to the question "why are we templating yaml?" is: pe…

I would recommend implementing a similar API to Grafana Tanka: https://tanka.dev

When you "synthesise", the returned value should be an array or an object.

1. If it's an object, check if it has an `apiVersion` and `kind` key. If it does, yield that as a kubernetes object and do not recurse. 2. If it's an array or any other object, repeat this algorithm for all array elements and object values.

This gives a lot of flexibility to users and other engineers because they can use any data structures they want inside their own libraries. TypeScript's type system improves the ergonomics, too.

Re: Why are we templating YAML? (2019)

#103

Post by robertlagrant »

mcculley wrote: post #85
bayindirh wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People balk at XML, but its verbosity plus DTD allows it to pull tricks which you can't do on other things. Well everything has its place, but XML is I think very well suited where you need to serialize complex things to a readable file, and verify it while being it's written and read back .

Indeed. I get a lot of value out of my strongly typed XML documents. I generally have code that validates them during writing and after reading. Those who don’t understand XML end up learning why it is verbose when they eventually add all of the features they need to whatever half-baked format they are using.

Agreed. XML is clunky, no doubt, but it's partly that the tools were just clunky.

Having said that, I do like that you can flip between YAML and JSON. If we could do that with XML (attributes vs sub-elements a problem here) it would be much more useful I think.

Re: Why are we templating YAML? (2019)

#104

Post by jasonjayr »

tipiirai wrote: post #32
kristiandupont wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just pinpointed my biggest peeve with YAML. It looks like it's "human friendly" because there are no scary curly braces. But you still need to get the syntax exactly right, so that benefit is very small. And now you have to keep your finger on the screen while scrolling in order to figure out what a bullet belongs to.

Then what alternative do you recommend for content creators? Do you use the alternative in Markdown front matter?

TOML is pretty easy to grok and forgiving at the same time

Re: Why are we templating YAML? (2019)

#106

Post by donalhunt »

sspiff wrote: post #17
ManBeardPc wrote: post #4

Worse yet, in some places (CI/CD) YAML becomes nearly a programming language. A very verbose, unintuitive, badly specified and vendor-specific one as well.

In some places working with Kubernetes, people unironically use the term "YAML engineer".

I've seen memes where SREs complain they have just become YAML engineers. :(

Re: Why are we templating YAML? (2019)

#107

Post by DonHopkins »

Y_Y wrote: post #92
indymike wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YAML is the Bradford Pear of serialization formats. It looks good at first, but as your project ages, and the YAML grows it collapses under the weight of it's own branches.

I had to look up that tree. Invasive, offensive odour, cynaide-rich fruit. That's a a good insult!

YAML is also just as bad as the Linden tree.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoqlYGuZGVM

Re: Why are we templating YAML? (2019)

#108

Post by Havoc »

TheFuzzball wrote: post #73
Havoc wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would one use the json api without ending up writing a bunch of custom code?

I think custom code is to be expected, and making it maintainable is what's important. > everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Helm et al made it simpler than it was, IMO.

Everyone hand rolling code does not seem like an improvement over tools like helm even if it’s yaml

Re: Why are we templating YAML? (2019)

#109

Post by torginus »

armchairhacker wrote: post #38

To me YAML seems like the CoffeeScript of JSON, and unlike CoffeeScript I don’t understand why people are still using it. I guess XML and JSON are too verbose. But YAML is so far in the opposite direction, we get the same surprise conversions we’ve had in Excel ( https://ruudvanasseldonk.com/2023/01/11/the-yaml-document-fr... ). Why is “on” a boolean literal (of course so are “true”, “false”, as well as “yes”, “no”,…

Dunno, to me YAML is the python of markup languages.

YAML is decent at handling things like nesting and arrays, while TOML sucks at it.

I don't dislike YAML that much.

That being said, we knew since the dawn of C macros that templating languages which are not aware of syntax, are AWFUL.

Likewise, writing Helm charts (the place I encountered YAML templating) is just horrible, but would be so much nicer is templates respected the YAML syntax tree and expanded at the right subnode, instead of being a text replace botch-jobs.

Re: Why are we templating YAML? (2019)

#110

Post by rad_gruchalski »

TheFuzzball wrote: post #73
Havoc wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would one use the json api without ending up writing a bunch of custom code?

I think custom code is to be expected, and making it maintainable is what's important. > everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Helm et al made it simpler than it was, IMO.

Helm is another can of hot garbage. Impossible to vendor without hitting name collisions, can configure only what’s templated.

Jsonnet is the way to go with generated helm manifests transformed later. Kustomize with its post-renderer hooks is another can of even hotter garbage.

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