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by ExoticPearTree 997 days ago
Do a mental exercise and think about what would k8s with XML configuration would have looked like and if would have taken off like it did using XML for configuration instead of YAML.

This is just an example.

Besides Microsoft frameworks that use XML as configuration, and Java frameworks and servers using XML for configuration (Tomcat comes to mind), no one else uses it. Maybe traditional software whose programmers don't know any better.

So yeah, I think the world doesn't like XML for really good reasons.

2 comments

I would have very much preferred it. It would be a lot more readable and accessible. Nowadays there is tooling, but imagine having schemas and autocomplete for all the K8s files from day 1.

So pretty much all enterprises use it. Not bad for tech not in fashion.

K8S problem really isn't YAML, it's that the thing it's trying to configure is a naturally complicated space that really wants to be typed but can't commit to any one language either.