Fortunately YAML is not actually necessary in k8s, and only provided as a convenience because writing JSON by hand (or Proto3, lol) is annoying verging on insane.

We can build higher level abstractions easily having a schema to target and we can build them in whatever we want. That's a big boon for me :)

For kubernetes thats absolutely true and I think more people should do that (disclaimer I work with this https://github.com/stripe/skycfg daily). I think it actually would be easier for people to understand the k8s system if they did.

But, yaml is now everywhere in the ops space. Config management systems use it, metrics systems use it, its the defacto configuration format right now and that is unfortunate cause its bad.

Why?

We have plenty of yaml 'code' which is simple and does exactly what it needs to do.

For all other usecases, there are plenty of alternatives, including libs for your preferred language.

Most people use the yaml way because its easy and does exactly what it needs to do.

Everyone else has plenty of well supported and well working alternatives.

Its typing is too weak. It’s block scoping is dangerous. References, classes and attachments are all pretty bad for reuse. Schemas are bolt on and there is no standard query language for it.