I feel the best thing HA can do going forward is get rid of YAML language.
So what do you suggest for Python to read?
Hell NO took me over 2 months to get my head around it
now its easy as
think soon everything will be done in the front end like lovelace is
give then time we get there.
1 Like
No way. YAML is great… your alternative is???
1 Like
idk but these white spaces are killing me
1 Like
well HA is moving more and more to a GUI interface all the time but still YAML in the background so there’s ever more choice… yaml is a nasty mistress at times but the more you use it the easier it gets and is reasonably logical after a while. Plenty of people to help you if you have problems as well.
1 Like
Use an editor that shows whitespace and has yaml syntax highlighting. VScode, Notepad++, Atom, etc…
1 Like
Clearly you don’t have an intelligent or informed suggestion so why did you post?
As far as I can see there are three alternatives, yaml, json and xml. They all have grammar rules, but for python, yaml seems to be the best match. It even follows similar rules to python for indentation.
Or perhaps development in python should stop too, lets go to visual basic.
You can use JSON inside YaML, it’s fully supported.
There is a yaml add-on for syntax checking for VSCode? Where? I’d like to use it!
I maybe showing my age but I’d be up for that 
Dare I admit I thought the same thing? Dang that language was easy to use. A sweet spot between the English-like but overly verbose COBOL, and the cryptic but powerful C.
As for YAML, here’s a raw beginner’s perspective: It works fine. Just like a thousand other text-based configuration file formats which have come before it. I’d much prefer this to goofy things like the Windows registry.
I’ve always indented code for readability, needed or not. It’s a good practice to be consistent with that indentation. The fact that it’s enforced in YAML is trivial, and if you need help remembering, there are text editors (see posts above) which will do it for you.
2 Likes
Yes, YAML certainly gets my vote, but it would definitely be more painful if you were using an editor without nice highlighting and indenting support.
GUI-based configuration will be nice for some things but I hope it stays in a plain-text-editable, version-controllable, comment-preserving format underneath!
Python can use ini files easily but that gets so messy. Yaml is great. Anyone that thinks it’s terrible has obviously never used any markup language before.