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Comment by Draiken | Hacker News Reader

What?

You're not bringing any arguments yourself. "There are no pros to using it" has got to be the most lazy thing I've read today.

Are we to assume that when the Google folks working on Kubernetes chose YAML they had a very brief moment of insanity? I can clearly see you hate it, but that's not an argument against it. Same for every other project that ever used YAML? Come on, that's a leap if I've ever seen one.

Those examples of yours are, again, very lazy. I'll take one of those just to prove my point: fossil fuels have bad consequences especially with overuse, but they of course had their pros, otherwise nobody would ever use it.

Take a deep breath mate. This is a discussion about YAML. Nobody is getting murdered.

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> You're not bringing any arguments yourself.

You'd need to search through my post history. The arguments are long and numerous. I'm not sure I want to repeat myself again. I promise to do the search part though. So, if you have patience, you can wait and I'll hopefully find something, but cannot promise to work fast.

PS.

> Are we to assume that when the Google folks working on Kubernetes chose YAML they had a very brief moment of insanity?

I am "Google folks", so what? Just come from a department unrelated to Kubernetes (and I don't work for Google anymore).

Kubernetes is an awful project inside and out. Poorly designed, poorly implemented... It owes its popularity to the lack of alternatives early on. (Docker Swarm never really took off, by the time they tried, Kuberenetes advertised itself as having way more features, way more integrations, even though the quality was low). Kubernetes fills a very important niche, that's why it's used so much. It would've been used just as much if you had to write charts in any other similar language, no matter the quality or the popularity of that language.

Now _that's_ an unpopular take. I love it!

Feel like revenge of guy frustrated by kubertes.

For the purpose of full disclosure: I worked at Elastifile, some time before and after acquisition. In terms of development of Kubernetes, I have nothing to do with it. We might have been among the early adopters, but that's about it. At my first encounter with Kubernetes I knew about it just as much as any other ops / infra programmer who'd be tasked with using it outside of Google (we actually started using it long before the acquisition).

I do, however, greatly regret that Kubernetes exists. I cherish the idea that instead of writing non-distributed applications and then trying to stitch them using the immense bloat that is Kubernetes the industry will turn to a framework that enables making applications distributed "from the inside" (like Erlang's OTP). I see Kubernetes as a "lazy" way into the future, where we waste a lot of infrastructure to cover for lack of talent and desire to learn how to do things right.

For me, Kubernetes sits in the same spot with planned obsolescence, unnecessary plastic bags and cigarette butts in the ocean. It's the comfort of today at the expense of the much greater struggle tomorrow.

OK, here's one example I could find: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=crabbone&next=365190...

Interesting comment. I agree with pretty much all of it.

Although in fairness, I never claimed YAML was good in any way, shape or form. My comment was always about the pointlessness of it all. Either we get projects to not use YAML or we're yelling at the void.

Given how passionate you are about this though, I am curious what would you suggest instead of YAML?

I agree. That post about all of the pitfalls of YAML was very well written. My two cents: The best config format that I have used is JSON with C & C++-style comments allowed. Sure, dates and numbers (int vs float) are still a bit wobbly, but it is good enough for 99% of my needs.

Kubernetes is such a magnificent piece of software which must have been created by brilliant gifted engineers IMHO. But even they make mistakes.

..And even when mistakes were made, you can still use just JSON with k8s and forget about that stupid backward yaml. K8s is the best

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