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Why YAML sucks? (programming.dev)
submitted 2 years ago* by to c/programming@programming.dev
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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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[–] 84 points 2 years ago (6 children)

Any language in which whitespace has syntactic value is intrinsically flawed.

Can't speak to your specific issues, but that's why yaml will always suck.

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  • [–] 25 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    As a serialization format, agree 100%, but would Python really be better if it switched to braces?

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  • [–] 63 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Yes, I think so. The downside with Python comes when refactoring the code. There’s always this double checking if the code is correctly indented after the refactor. Sometimes small mistakes creep in.

    It’s really hard to tell when Python code is incorrectly indented. It’s often still valid Python code, but you can’t tell if it’s wrong unless you know the intention of the code.

    In order languages it’s always obvious when code is incorrectly indented. There’s no ambiguity.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    It’s only hard to tell indentation in Python when the code block gets longer than about a screen, which is usually a sign the code should be refactored into smaller methods.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    As someone who has been working in Python a ton for the last couple years, it’s amusing to me how many downvotes you’re getting for simply noting that good code style and tight, terse, modularized implementation of business logic more or less addresses the issue. Because it absolutely does in the vast majority of cases.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    People hate hearing that they are bad coders 😂

    You and the other guy are saying to focus on writing code with less indentation and using smaller methods, and you both got downvoted.

    I fully agree, small methods all the way, and when that's not possible it's time to refactor into possibility!

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  • [–] 29 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Yes it would - look at optional braces for short if expressions in C family languages and why it's so discouraged in large projects. Terminating characters are absolutely worth the cost of an extra LoC

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  • [–] 17 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I started in C before moving on to C++, Java, Ruby and Python.

    I’ve had more bugs from missing braces than from misaligned whitespace because the latter is far more obvious when looking at a block of code.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Compilation error or run time errors? One is a gift and the other is a curse.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    PHP likes to have a word with you. (:

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Like what?

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years 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.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years 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.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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!!

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years 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.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 child)

    To be pedantic, it's level of indentation in Python that has semantic meaning, not whitespace.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    The end of line also has semantic meaning. Both indentation and eol are whitespace.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago*

    Indentation can be (and should be) tabs, EOL is it's its own thing either \n or CRLF which Python source code did actually care about as recently as 2.3.

    Assumptions like this is why most people should stick to verbose languages with lots of guardrail braces.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    Haskell supports both semantic whitespace and explicit delimiters, and somehow almost everybody that uses the language disagrees with you.

    But anyway, for all the problems of YAML, this one isn't even relevant enough to point out. Even if you agree it's a problem. (And I agree that the YAML semantic whitespace is horrible.) If YAML was a much better language, it would be worth arguing whether semantic whitespace breaks it or not.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    YAML sucks because, among other things, indenting it is not obvious.

    In contrast, the only mistake of Python when it comes to whitespaces was allowing hard tabs, which makes it too easy to mix them if your editor is not configured.

    Improper indentation stands out more than missing or unbalanced braces and it's really not an issue to delimit code blocks.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Not any language. I code professionally in F# which has semantic whitespace and it has literally never been an issue for me or my team. In contrast to Python, it’s a compiled language and the compiler is quite strict, so that probably helps.

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