That’s more of a weakness of yaml. There’s so many ways to specify the exact same thing. Not exactly what you need for configuration files maintained by multiple people. It easily becomes an big incoherent mess.

In JSON the default way is the only way. Nice and coherent.

A bit underwhelming.

The Future: More of the Present by Jake Likes Onions

https://jakelikesonions.com/post/158707858999/the-future-more-of-the-present

It's been satisfying watching my configuration.yaml file shrink over the years as more and more things get handled by the UI.

Not always, but the second you use anchor/references you have sold your soul in a Faustian bargain of convenience.

On the alignment chart of data/markup formats:

• lawful good: JSON
• lawful neutral: TOML
• lawful evil: XML
• neutral good: reStructuredText
• true neutral: HTML
• neutral evil: LaTeX
• chaotic good: YAML
• chaotic neutral: Markdown
• chaotic evil: xlsx/csv

Yes, a bit. But that's not the problem.

The problem is that the current fashion of devops is done through piles and piles of badly defined YAML. If it used any other configuration language, it would be just as bad.

It isn't "bad", as it does have a purpose. It's just fucking annoying to work with.

https://docs.platform.sh/learn/overview/yaml/what-is-yaml.html

There are plugins that go back and forth between JSON and YAML so as you might expect it's similar. Unlike JSON, spacing has semantic meaning, which can be a little annoying, especially when cutting and pasting. It's nice in that configs aren't cluttered up with open and close braces. It could be annoying AF if you're a tabs instead of spaces person but idk because I'm a spaces person.

I like YAML for config over .config files but it's not a big deal either way. It just encourages better organization of settings because the hierarchical structure demands it while .config let's you just drop a setting anywhere in the file. But it's valid to have the opposite preference for the exact same reasons.

I'll answer your question with a question. Why does YAML support sexagesimal? (that's base 60)

ports:
- 22:22

Becomes

{
  "ports": [1342]
}

not at all. it's used for configuration and stuff. having a lot of it can be a real bummer depending on the context. like a puppet config or perhaps a super weird docker compose setup. I've never heard anyone complain about the markup though. it's like blaming json for a crap api or something or idk blaming the coffee cup for burnt coffee 🤷

That's okay, not everyone can be right :)