dub: JSON, SDL, YAML, TOML, what color should we paint it ?

[tastyminerals]

On Wednesday, 1 March 2023 at 09:14:17 UTC, Mathias LANG wrote:
> On Wednesday, 1 March 2023 at 07:41:02 UTC, tastyminerals wrote:
>>
>> It is safer to just go with whatever is used and accepted as a 
>> reliable format for configs. I like the idea to use plain D 
>> tbo.
>>
>> JSON lacks comments, but it's fine for minimal default 
>> projects. We try to use TOML everywhere in a company, although 
>> I cannot say how well it works as a config for building 
>> projects. YAML is the most risky, since it has a high chance 
>> to alienate a sizeable amount of potential users.
>
> Why would YAML be the most risky choice ? For me it's quite the 
> opposite: It's a well known and accepted format, AND the 
> implementation is already there. So I clearly don't see how it 
> would alienate users, except if those users are also alienated 
> by Github Actions, Circle CI, Kubernetes, Ansible, Docker...

You are right, YAML is used in many places these days and good 
developers should not be having much trouble adjusting.

When I talk about YAML, I am referring to hundreds of frustration 
filled experiences that people eagerly share on hacker news or 
face-to-face when it comes to YAML. Starting from different IDE 
using different formatting and messing people's PRs, ending with 
scary stories about accidentally broken kustomizations causing 
prod outages. Because people make mistakes :/
It takes a few seconds to find a bunch of blog articles with some 
critique towards YAML and why you should not use it. Imagine how 
many beginners are getting inspired by such information and 
forming their own opinions.

Valid or not, there is a lot of hate towards YAML among 
developers. I am sure that adopting it has its benefits, it is 
used successfully in our company as well. What I am not sure of 
is whether the main building D tool needs this notoriety and 
mental "baggage". Once adopted, next thing you will see on this 
forum are questions why YAML for dub?