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Why YAML sucks? (programming.dev)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I feel that Yaml sucks. I understand the need for such markup language but I think it sucks. Somehow it's clunky to use. Can you explain why?

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

False dichotomy. Optional braces are bad practice because they mislead the programmer that is adding an additional clause to the block.

This misleading behavior wouldn't happen in Python, as it would either be invalid syntax, or it would be part of the block.

Indentation problems are pretty obvious to the reader. Even more than missing or unbalanced braces.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

They may be obvious to the reader but they may be impossible to see if tabs and spaces are mixed together.

Closing tokens are always clearer.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

yes, from my other comment

the only mistake of Python when it comes to whitespaces was allowing hard tabs

but that's easily fixed with an editor setting - on the other hand, unbalancing braces (and not realizing it) is too easy all the time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That misleading behavior does happen in Python. The next programmer that comes along can’t tell if the original programmer fucked it up and didn’t unindent to put a statement outside of the block or if they meant to put it inside the block. I’ve debugged this one too many times and it takes hours each time because it’s impossible to see the bug at all!!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

The misleading behavior is about what you expect to execute in the source code you're looking at vs what's actually executed.

What you describe is a logic ambiguity that can happen in any program / language.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

I don’t agree. It’s a direct result of whitespace, which does not happen if you don’t use whitespace. For example it can happen in Java and kotlin, but only if you use if statements without braces, which you pretty much never see. If you do see it you know to look out for the exact issue I described. That’s not possible in Python, since there is no alternative.