Dec 9, 2025, 5:13 PMYAML is such a stupid, stupid format for human-written config files. I've just spent an hour finding a two-space "error" in netplan. Using spaces (or tabs) for semantics was (and still is) a mistake in makefiles, it was a mistake in Occam, it's still a mistake in Python and it's a mistake in YAML. It's a mistake whenever humans are supposed to write these files.
@sten word!
Still, your editor could watch this.
Dec 9, 2025, 6:51 PM@lobingera And it does! But even though it's emacs, it's perhaps too much to expect it to keep track of the correct number of spaces. The YAML spec is insane, have you seen it? Here, take a look: https://yaml.org/spec/1.2.2/
@sten (at my workplace) we moved from a internal format for configuration to YAML - with the hope the situation gets better ... and it partially is
(e.g. having schema available in the editor)
Dec 9, 2025, 7:17 PM@lobingera I'm sure having a language with a schema is better than having one with none. But me, I'm a fan of small domain-specific languages. I could spot mistakes in sendmail.cf from a mile away (not literally, obviously, but you get my drift). Try that with netplan config files or ansible playbooks.
And the amount of stuff you get for free with a well-designed domain-specific language is awesome. But these days, people think of config files only as key-value stores.
Dec 9, 2025, 6:57 PM@sten and yet Facebook people managed to make yaml even worse in Yarn lockfiles by having their own "flavor" of yaml, that is, surprise, not yaml.
"You want to parse it? Tough luck loser!".
https://github.com/yarnpkg/yarn/issues/2250#issuecomment-336546514
Dec 9, 2025, 6:59 PM@pft If I'm not mistaken. FB have their own flavour of PHP, too. So their stuff runs on FB-PHP and FB-YAML. Serves them right, I guess!
@sten so true!
I am using whitespace-mode in Emacs and an on-line validator, but it often takes me a couple of iterations before getting it right.
Why do not they use curly braces ....
Dec 22, 2025, 9:37 AM@BrunoLevy01 Exactly. Why something that isn't visible should have semantic value for something that humans are supposed to write is beyond me. The same thing applies to Python indentation and makefiles: "Oh, the indentation looks right in your editor, does it? Well, I'm here to tell you that these are SPACES, not TABS as required, and that therefore your makefile won't run as you thought it should!" Or "Oh, you're trying to paste Python code in here? Fat chance!"