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Why are we templating YAML? (2019)

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Re: Why are we templating YAML? (2019)

#201

Post by CuriouslyC »

bayindirh wrote: post #78
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”,…

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, XML is a decent document language because of the quality of tools available and its power/flexibility. I hate when people use it for config files and other things that are usually human edited where readability is paramount though.

Re: Why are we templating YAML? (2019)

#202

Post by Redoubts »

wkat4242 wrote: post #117
torginus wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 re…

The biggest issue I have with Yaml is that they forbid tabs. Their argument is that tabs are shown differently in every editor which is actually something I like. When you're looking for something deeply nested you can reduce the tab distance a bit, when that's not needed you can increase it to improve visibility of nesting levels. And forbidding it makes a one-keystroke action a two or four one. I really don't under…

> And forbidding it makes a one-keystroke action a two or four one.

You can’t be serious

Re: Why are we templating YAML? (2019)

#203

Post by bayindirh »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #187
Brian_K_White wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shall we bet on what would happen if we asked 10 random people of any IT stripe to write a small sample INI file? Come on.

The problem isn't with the small configuration files, those are just argv put into a file. Here's an experiment actually worth doing: ask ten people to write a ini file for configuring between 3 and 6 servers where some properties are the same for several servers.

It'd generate same set of problems in INI, YAML, TOML, XML, JSON, BICF (bayindirh's imaginary configuration format).

Because these are not related to how you write the file, but how your software operates in your mind.

Re: Why are we templating YAML? (2019)

#205

Post by herpdyderp »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #197
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”,…

YAML is an amazing config language for simple to mildly complex configs. It's easier to read and write than JSON, and it only really breaks apart when you're heavily deviating from nested lists/dictionaries with string values. People use it everywhere because by the time it becomes painful you're already so invested it's not really worth the hassle of switching.

I, on the other hand, find it much harder to read and write even in very simple configs. I never know what the indent is supposed to be, I just press my spacebar until my editor stops complaining. I find it really hard to tell if a line is a new entry or a subset of the parent entry.

I'm sure if I used it more it'd become easier, but my whole team doesn't understand it either. Luckily we only need it for GitHub configurations.

Re: Why are we templating YAML? (2019)

#206

Post by hitchstory »

lucideer wrote: post #59
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”,…

> I don’t understand why people are still using it It's a good comaparator, there are indeed a lot of similarities, but I never understood why anyone ever used Coffeescript whereas I do think I have a solid understanding of why people use YAML. It's more like Python than Coffeescript really: it's not just about simplicity & brevity, it's about terminators. Whitespace-dependent languages are often a pain to format / p…

>by being extremely strict about indentation, both in terms of the parser & also community convention. YAML hasn't

This is why I created StrictYAML. A lot of the pain of changing YAML goes away if you strictly type it with a schema but you keep the readability.

Counterintuitively that also includes most indentation errors - it's much easier to zero in on the problem if the error was "expecting status code or content on line 334, got response", for instance.

Re: Why are we templating YAML? (2019)

#207

Post by mcdonje »

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.

I think PDML hits a sweet spot. The author didn't set out to recreate XML in a less verbose, more human readable syntax, but pretty much ended up doing so. I'd like to see it mature and gain more widespread adoption.

Re: Why are we templating YAML? (2019)

#208

Post by moffkalast »

michaelmior wrote: post #194
wkat4242 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest issue I have with Yaml is that they forbid tabs. Their argument is that tabs are shown differently in every editor which is actually something I like. When you're looking for something deeply nested you can reduce the tab distance a bit, when that's not needed you can increase it to improve visibility of nesting levels. And forbidding it makes a one-keystroke action a two or four one. I really don't under…

> And forbidding it makes a one-keystroke action a two or four one. The majority of editors can be configured to use tab to insert the appropriate number of spaces. Many will automatically detect the correct configuration.

The majority isn't all, and in my experience you always end up having to use one in some random situation that doesn't have that. tap tap tap tap

Literally 100% of editors support tabs.

Re: Why are we templating YAML? (2019)

#210

Post by jampekka »

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”,…

I'm still using CoffeeScript whenever I can. It has one of the nicest syntaxes out there, a lot of code fits to one screenful, the logic of the code is easier to see without the clutter of unnecessary syntax and it's a joy to write too.

YAML is probably used for similar reasons.

I don't understand why people want redundant verbose syntax that makes reading and writing code harder. And sadly don't anymore expect anyone to really explain it based on anything tangible.

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