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> YAML is not perfect. Neither is JSON, TOML, XML or even code as configuration (Xmonad anyone?).

Whataboutism and false dichotomy in one.

My house isn't perfect, so it's no different than living in a cave.

My car isn't perfect, so it's no different than riding a bike.

France isn't perfect, so it's no different than North Korea.

Macs aren't perfect, so it's no different than a slide ruler.



Care to elaborate?

You wrote a lot of words but said nothing. My argument is that picking only on YAML is useless because we can find faults in all of them. There's no perfect choice, just trade-offs.

What's your point?


Not the parent but the logic is fairly clear.

Something being suboptimal (JSON not allowing comments unless it's JSONC) is very different from the trash heap of poor YAML design decisions shown in this article.


Isn't this confirmation bias at work? These are poor decisions of different degrees, but they're still simply poor decisions.

I have no horse in this race. I suffered with the shortcomings of all of these formats. So I don't see a point in saying "this one is in a different category of bad". YAML was built with different ideas in mind. If we are so adamant on hating on something, we should hate the projects that chose YAML over something else.


> These are poor decisions of different degrees

We agree.

> but they're still simply poor decisions

I, the other poster, and the article writer feel a preponderance of poor decisions regarding YAML (mentioned in the story) make it much worse than a few poor decisions regarding JSON or similar.


No it's not confirmation bias. The linked site has TONS OF EXAMPLES of why. XML is verbose, that's pretty much the only problem. JSON is simple, that's its only problem. Those are TINY problems.


Not my comment but I would agree that "If it was that bad, nobody would use it" is a weak argument - there is a lot of bad things around us which we have to use. It should not stop us discussing that they are bad.




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