---
date: "2009-04-15T16:38:00Z"
title: Talk to Your Kids About YAML or Their Friends Will
---

<p><a href="http://eng.genius.com/blog/2009/04/15/yaml-gotchas/">This article</a> nicely illustrates my beef with <a href="http://yaml.org/">YAML</a>;
namely, the YAML grammar is far too complicated.  Complexity in data
serialization and exchange formats should be avoided, because it
virtually guarantees subtle interoperability problems.  </p>

<p>If you need to exchange structured data in a language-agnostic format,
do me a favor and use <a href="http://json.org/">JSON</a> instead.</p>