this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2026
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Significant white-space is bullshit and i will die on this hill.
Is there space left on the hill? I want to join you.
I hear there's significant space left
But it's only white space. That's kinda racist.
significant white space to it's classist and racist
Their whole thing is that they don't want to care about it, so if you get to the hill and there's no space, you're SOL.
Yeah I just want JSON with optionally quoted keys, and comments.
JSON5 my beloved
Preach!
You are not alone, my friend
You're going to indent your code anyway, so why not let the indentation carry meaning?
Because yaml is not a programming language, and debugging why your whatever you're configuring isn't working correctly can be a nightmare. It doesn't tell you you missed an indent on a block, it just assumes it should be there and changes the meaning.
Braces are visually clear.
I think YAML has its fair share of design flaws, but I don't think significant indentation is one of them. It may not be a programming language (which may be debatable), but there are plenty that use syntactic whitespace.
It's not debatable... You linked to a programming language that uses yaml syntax, that didn't make yaml itself a programming language... It's not.
And I know there are plenty that use syntactic whitespace, and I hate that about all of them. Literally my only real frustration with python is due to the time of my life wasted debugging perfectly fine logic that fails because a few lines had incorrect indentation.
Because I am not counting white space when I read. Or should we just write machine code/assembler/pick something straight away?
Not sure I'm following the jump from significant whitespace to machine code. How are those related?
Human and machine read differently. If you ignore that (in case with indentation), then why bother with writing human-friendly form of code, when what is going to be really executed is something else?
If anything, that sounds like an argument in favor of significant indentation, not against it. Humans and machines read differently, yes, which is why we tend to add whitespace and indentation to code even for programming languages where it's not significant. We do that expressly because it makes the code more human-friendly, so it's quite the opposite of ignoring their differences.
No, it is an argument against it. We indent code so that it is more comfortable to read it, not in order to make it easier to understand
You're mistaken:
Lol. Go on, show me how it is easier to understand structure of the code when I am 3 levels down, first two are already out of sight
That's not a coherent argument, but you don't have to agree with me. I think this discussion has run its course.
What a nice way to say "I can't back my standpoint up". Anyway, do have a good day