Hacker News Reader

Comment by ActionHank | Hacker News Reader

Gotta be honest, any time there's a solution like there that makes it more "human" they've just removed the structure / syntax.

I'm guessing so you don't need to learn them, so then anyone off the street can edit the files, but it will break so bad without those guardrails, usually in some non-obvious way.

Leading us back to inventing some new "human" thing, but with more implicit rules, and the cycle continues.

View on HN

Have a text area that checks if the config is valid on each key stroke, if not rollback to the previous one. Can put some red ink under it explaining why you can't do that.

Trying to remove a required number the last remaining digit is highlighted so that you can type over it.

"Have a text area"

You've already failed. Config files are for more than just editing in an environment that you solely control.

> just removed the structure / syntax.

But they added syntax, such as unit specifiers for time.

And some syntax, like YAML bare strings, or XML entities referring to external resources, has to be removed.

Most people just want JSON with comments and the ability to edit long strings, which I think is legitimate. You can tell by how many “json with comments” variants are out there in use: JSONC, JSON5, and HuJSON come to mind. Someone should probably standardize it, so I can add a fourth variant to the list :D

Edit: obligatory XKCD comic: https://xkcd.com/927/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com