[patsplat]

YAML predated / was concurrent with JSON. Both were in reaction to the bloat of XML.

[Mikhail_Edoshin]

It's funny that YAML spec is three times as long as XML 1.0.

[patsplat]

The XML bloat is on the processing side.

[patsplat]

Or rather, was. At the time one could either:

- write a sax event based parser that scaled but was low level

- use a DOM parser with a fairly convoluted API. The combination of attributes and children makes for wordy accessors.

Both YAML and JSON provide formats that more readily deserialize into native map / list / string / number types which at the time was quite convenient.