> YAML, used sparingly, without too much complexity, is fine
It's wishful thinking because the complexity is inherent, unfortunately. That's analogue to saying "programmers should not write bugs". Humans are fallible and error prone, it's not going to happen unless a language is restricted in such a way that a category of bugs is not possible by design. However, YAML's design is sprawling, so despite best intentions people will run into the problems caused by the complexity. Possible ways out are restrictions of the design (e.g. Strict YAML) or whole replacements (e.g. NestedText).
> There are a few gotchas that are easy to catch with validations.
Does this actually exist? If not, who's writing the code for these validations? How can we make sure everyone who needs to use them is using them?
The idea sounds good on paper, but not workable in practice because "patching after the spec problems" requires global coordination.
It's wishful thinking because the complexity is inherent, unfortunately. That's analogue to saying "programmers should not write bugs". Humans are fallible and error prone, it's not going to happen unless a language is restricted in such a way that a category of bugs is not possible by design. However, YAML's design is sprawling, so despite best intentions people will run into the problems caused by the complexity. Possible ways out are restrictions of the design (e.g. Strict YAML) or whole replacements (e.g. NestedText).
> There are a few gotchas that are easy to catch with validations.
Does this actually exist? If not, who's writing the code for these validations? How can we make sure everyone who needs to use them is using them?
The idea sounds good on paper, but not workable in practice because "patching after the spec problems" requires global coordination.