> The problem isn't YAML specifically, it's that to do everything ansible does they have to extend YAML into a crappy programming language in-and-of-itself.
I don't recall how ansible extends yaml, but Microsoft does something that sounds similar with their JSON-based ARM templates (which are for deploying cloud resources), adding functions for loops, parameters and variables. The result is predictably horrible. There are however at least APIs available for C# and others, so it's not the only automation option.
If they're going to do that, the configuration files should just use a actual programming language. Just make them actual python files (or ruby files, or whatever).
From the famous quote:
> Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.
The problem here isn't that they're using lisp (or python, or yaml, or whatever), it's that they're re-implementing a very mature language with lots of supporting infrastruture poorly with lots of bugs and corner cases, rather then just using the relevant (open source) programming language itself.