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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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[–] 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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