YAML is the Excel of data formats due to the Norway Problem

Since it’s a superset of JSON, couldn’t you just use the JSON notation if you hate the semantic whitespace?

I dgaf about indices starting at 0 or 1, I can deal with case-insensitivity, but syntactically significant whitespace drives me up the wall.

I hate em cos regardless of language auto formatter takes care of everything. So now im typing extra characters and fucking shit up and confusing myself when moving code between scopes.

You take that back, python is my homie!

In all seriousness, I freely admit that I'm biased towards python because it was my first language and remains my favorite. I use an IDE for anything but the simplest scripts, so I've very rarely had any issues with spacing.

I agree but still you can oftentimes expect that the average person's initial reaction to be somehow reluctant... until they understand it. it's like those foods and drinks that you might need to try a couple times before you start enjoying them.

fine i will take the bait: thats 5 spaces

Semantic whitespace is awful because whitespace (something that you can't actually see) has meaning in how the program runs. Braces { } for scopes gives you the ability to easily tell at a glance where a scope ends. Whitespace doesn't allow for that. Especially, especially when you can accidentally exit a scope (two new lines in a row with Python) and it's not actually an error (Pythons global scope). Yeah formatters and linters make this less of an issue but it sucks... Languages with legible symbols for scoping are significantly easier to reason about, see end symbols in Lua.

S-expressions are a hack because the Lisp devs didn’t know how to make an actual compiler, and instead had the users write the syntax tree for them. (For legal reasons I am being facetious).

Just for anyone thinking you are serious; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-expression I love how S-expression existed.

McCarthy had planned to develop an automatic Lisp compiler (LISP 2) using M-expressions as the language syntax and S-expressions to describe the compiler's internal processes. Stephen B. Russell read the paper and suggested to him that S-expressions were a more convenient syntax. Although McCarthy disapproved of the idea, Russell and colleague Daniel J. Edwards hand-coded an interpreter program that could execute S-expressions.[2] This program was adopted by McCarthy's research group, establishing S-expressions as the dominant form of Lisp.

I literally can't see whitespace, it gives me headaches looking for it. With brackets, I can get bracket matching in my IDE.

Might just be me but YAML is some of the least readable shit I've ever used.

People with bracketed languages just want to write the most unreadable code ever to feel superior.

Anti Commercial-AI license

Python decided to use a single convention (semantic whitespace) instead of two separate ones for machine decodeable scoping and manual/visual scoping. That's part of Python's design principle. The program should behave exactly like what people expect it to (without strenuous reasoning exercises).

But some people treat it as the original sin. Not surprised though. I've seen developers and engineers nurture weird irrational hatred towards all sorts of conventions. It's like a phobia.

Similar views about yaml. It may not be the most elegant - it had to be the superset of JSON, after all. But Yaml is a semi-configuration language while JSON is a pure serialization language. Try writing a kubernetes manifest or a compose file in pure JSON without whitespace alignment or comments (which pure JSON doesn't support anyway). Let's see how pleasant you find it.

This leads to weird bugs when you change indentation and miss a line or reorder lines. The logic changes. Not too bad when you’re on your own, as Python seems to be intended for. Add multiple developers and git merges and it is a recipe for disaster. With end tags at least you just end up with poorly formatted working code.

The number of times I move code around and can just press a hotkey to fix indentation though. Not possible with Python.

Meow.

moo

Yep! Most of us are even homo sapiens!