Programmer Humor

Chuck in comments and I'm on board.

Well...

It's name-value pairs, with groups denoted by balanced brackets. It's close to as good as you can get for one kind of data serialization.

What is impressive is how many problems people manage to fit in something so small.

What's it called when people try to reinvent Lisp for the hundredth time?

I was such a menace with this joke as a child. Haha

YAML is redeemed by one thing only:

All JSON is valid YAML.

As someone who works with YAML regularly:

Fuck YAML.

I want to like yaml, I really do, but why are there so many different ways of specifying the same thing?

I have a fundamental disdain for formats with restrictive white space definitions (I’m looking too at you Python)

The json spec is not versioned. There were two changes to it in 2005 (the removal of comments

See, this is why we can't have nice things.

As if I didn't hate the format enough before

Significant white-space is bullshit and i will die on this hill.

Well, Wikipedia does say:

The [TOML] project standardizes the implementation of the ubiquitous INI file format (which it has largely supplanted[citation needed]), removing ambiguity from its interpretation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOML

Sounds like Nix is a pathway to many abilities I consider to be unnatural.

It’s basically just JSON that can generate itself !

You have inspired me.

I will make JSON with meta-programming

I will call it DyJSON, i.e. "Dynamic JSON" but pronounced "Die, Jason!"

It is JSON with meta-programming and the ability to call C functions from libraries

Example:

# This is a line comment

# Put your function definitions up here
(concat str_a str_b: "concat" "my-lib.so") # Import a function through a C ABI
(make-person first_name last_name email -> { # Define our own generative func
    "name": (concat (concat $first_name " ") $last_name),
    "email": $email
})

# And then the JSON part which uses them
[
    (make-person "Jenny" "Craig" "jenn.craig.420@hotmail.com"),
    (make-person "Parson" "Brown" null)
]

As you can see, it is also a LISP to some degree

Is there a need for this? A purpose? No. But some things simply should exist

Thank you for helping bring this language into existence

I don't feel like it will stray very far from what's dubbed "TOML 0.1" in the meme. Yes, it has inline tables and as of TOML 1.1, they're allowed to span multiple lines, so it's technically not anymore illegal to do what's in the meme. But all things considered, this is still a miniscule change compared to TOML 1.0.

The very minor and nitpicky problem is that if you want JSON just use JSON. there's still a place in the world for human readable/ editable configs that don't require linters to be run on them after. (Current TOML is fine, I like it).