In this episode of Dead Code, Jared interviews Ingy döt Net, co-creator of YAML, about its origins, unexpected rise in popularity—especially within the Ruby community—and its evolution into a widely used configuration language. Ingy shares insights into YAMLScript, a new programming language he developed to address YAML’s limitations, enabling more powerful configuration and data transformation through a Lisp-like approach. By leveraging Clojure and GraalVM, YAMLScript offers cross-language compatibility and improves YAML’s usability in environments like Kubernetes and Helm. The conversation explores broader industry trends in serialization, the challenges of maintaining a widely adopted format, and Ingy’s philosophy of acmeism, which promotes language-agnostic tooling. He also discusses YAMLScript’s warm reception at KubeCon and its inclusion in programming education platforms like Exercism.

Links:

YAMLScript Official Website

YAMLScript GitHub Repository

Exercism

Make a Lisp

KubeCon

Prism

Helm

GraalVM

MkDocs Material 

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Episode Transcript

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