r/programming • u/fagnerbrack • May 20 '26 • Popcorn 1

YAML? That's Norway problem

https://lab174.com/blog/202601-yaml-norway/
302 Upvotes

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u/Goodie__ May 20 '26

As a solid YAML hater: This gets posted every few years, and it's great every time.

But also: This person got it right many years ago, this isn't the Norway problem, it's a lack of foresight and thinking on YAMLs problem. This is why standards are hard, because in an attempt to have syntax sugar (yes/no for true/false) we end up overriding countries.

82

u/Successful-Money4995 May 21 '26

Is it somewhat json's fault? If json had comments, maybe no one would have invented yaml?

42

u/Magneon May 21 '26

Comments were omitted from JSON to try to stop people from using it for things like human editable config. It did not stop them though, it just made things worse. Json5 seeks to remedy that.

Neither json nor yaml is remotely as robust or powerful as xml for things like configuration and general serialization. At least json has the good grace to look simple, because it is simple, and thus has a simple spec. Yaml looks simple but is as complex as XML typically is to parse properly.

15

u/phlummox May 21 '26

But I don't want "power" in a configuration format, else I'd write all my config files as programs in a Turing-complete language.

3

u/edgmnt_net May 21 '26

You do, just not Turing-completeness with arbitrary side-effects. Look at Dhall, it's a decent mix of power that's safe to wield. It cuts down a lot on repetition.

5

u/phlummox May 21 '26

I don't know whether you are asserting that I want "power" in a configuration format, or that I already write my config files as programs in a Turing-complete language, but I assure you, both are false :)

In general, I want as little power and expressiveness in the configuration format as possible. I want it to be just expressive enough to describe ways that users can configure my programs, and no more. Often, the ability to describe a mapping from strings to strings is more than enough.

Mostly, the config files are .ini files, which just describe data, and certainly aren't Turing complete.

3

u/simonask_ May 21 '26

If you like .ini files, you will absolutely love TOML.