Yaml is actively harmful. This site should not exist. about www.yaml.org HOT 2 CLOSED

@duaneking,

The world is diverse in terms of people, ideas, beliefs, abilities and technologies. YAML is one of many projects I've contributed in an attempt to lower the barriers of communication between people and computers. Depending on who you ask, it currently falls anywhere between totally amazing and abject failure. I know where you stand.

The good news is that it is a work in progress. In less than 2 hours the Revision 1.2.2 of the YAML Specification will be released. This is a big step in our ambition to see the language progressively evolve to become more helpful to people.

Your constructive ideas for improving YAML for everyone are welcomed by the YAML Language Development Team.

— @ingydotnet

PS - Both of my eyes are physically damaged.

from www.yaml.org.

Hi @duaneking ,

my case is not comparable to yours, but still I would like to give you my feedback on this.

People's disabilities vary a lot, and it would be easy to call many things "explicitly discriminating". I just don't find that very constructive.

Let me give you an example. I like to use tmux and tmate (a terminal multiplexer that can be used for pair programming).
The default prefix key shortcut is ctrl-b. Now, I was born without my right forearm. I type with my left hand and press shift and arrow keys with my right elbow.
ctrl-a is relatively easy to type for me with my left fingers, but ctrl-b is just too cumbersome for an often used prefix key. (*) There is a workaround, but with exceptions, see below

Now, I can configure my own tmux to use ctrl-a, but when I pair-program with others in tmate I have to use their default, ctrl-b, because every participant has to use the same prefix key.

I would never think of calling tmux explicitly discriminating because the authors chose ctrl-b, though.
Different people have different needs, and it's usually impossible to account for every need.
While I would be fine with ctrl-a, right-only handed people wouldn't.

Obviously a lot of people find YAML very useful, and also a lot of people find it annoying. There are even people doing both.

Everyone should try to make websites, tools, languages as accessible as possible to everyone, but also opinions on that might vary.
There might be editor tools helping with some of the problems (not assuming that you didn't try such things of course).
For example I have heard several times that people have problems if they accidentally add a tab in their YAML file.
In my editor configuration (vim), I let it show tabs and trailing spaces, so I wouldn't easily miss it.

I also hope we can get better YAML tools in the future, that e.g. could do an indent-change for better readability. While we try to improve YAML, one goal is to improve the tools for it.
We hope for constructive feedback.

(*) I use Linux, and there I can use xmodmap to map ctrl-b onto the OS key on my keyboard. That's actually pretty cool, because normally you can't map key combinations, but since ctrl-b is a keycode itself, it works. It's just that one of my laptops has a hardware problem making that mapping unusable for me.

from www.yaml.org.