On: XML is almost always misused

[yellowapple]

> preferably not need an external library or a custom parser. Json, Csv, Toml, S-Expressions, protobufs all fail one of more of these requirements.

And XML doesn't? Quite a few (not all, but quite a few nonetheless) programming languages include zero support for reading or writing XML-formatted data without using an external library or custom parser. This includes nearly all languages that predate XML, and quite a few languages that postdate it. Even when a language does have built-in (or at least in the standard library) support for XML, it's almost always a royal pain to use, especially once namespaces and schemas are involved.

Once upon a time, though, the answer was (and in a lot of places still is) INI:

- It's human-editable and supports comments

- It supports more complex structure than CSV

- Some languages have built-in support for it, and the Windows and GLib APIs support it, too (well, something similar enough to be compatible, in the latter case)

INI falls flat when you need to express deeper levels of nesting than keys and sections, though.

There's also YAML, which meets all your criteria about as well as XML does (at least on average; your specific language/platform might favor one or the other).

[alkonaut → yellowapple]

Right. Xml is to .NET what ini was for MFC. It’s what the platform “makes” you use. The same is true for json on js of course.

On a platform that has almost no support out of the box (e.g python) the choice is open. But on a platform that has a couple of formats built in, picking a format outside that platform is a pretty big step. The return needs to be substantial for a .net developer to use yaml via an external library over xml.

My reasoning in this thread has always started from the perspective that xml comes built in and almost no other format does. This is the case for e.g java and .net but not for python or C for example. But the prevalence of xml comes from java/.net so if we are to ask why, then we should consider that.

[EdwardDiego → yellowapple]

> There's also YAML

Omg YAML. Here's an example for you.

      - external:
        metric:
          name: kafka_consumer_group_lag
          selector:
            matchLabels:
              topic: rtb_trx_records
              consumer_group: trx-record-validator
        target:
          type: Value
          value: 30000
      type: External

It seems like the "type: External" should line up with "metric" and "target" but no, it needs to line up with the word "external" - not the dash, but the word after a space after the dash. Using YAML frequently reminds me of the quote "Be open minded, but not so open minded that your brains fall out".

[yellowapple → EdwardDiego]

I'm kinda surprised that's even valid YAML. I was under the impression that arrays and dicts can't mix like that.

[alkonaut → EdwardDiego]

Things like these should just be code in my opinion.