Yes, let’s dump YAML. Yes, let’s dump arbitrary DSLs for declarative data structures. Yes, let’s adopt a lisp’s syntax. Just... let’s adopt the one (EDN) with more than one kind of bracket, some kind of traction, a surprisingly good mapping to static types, and a surprisingly robust compatibility with existing tooling (Transit).

It’s true there are some rough edges here, notably mostly in the actual Clojure(Script) implementations (unfortunately unsurprising) rather than in EDN. Also worth emphasizing that Transit addresses many of the issues highlighted (as well as EDN’s biggest downside outside the Clojure ecosystem: it’s slow).

YES! Preach! Stop making me write DSLs in things that aren't programming languages, and start using programing languages that naturally allow DSLs.

There are places where it makes sense. I don't love Kubernetes' YAML, but it makes sense as a serialization format. I think LISP would be out of place here firstly because your serialization format really shouldn't be executable, and secondly because it offers few advantages. You can implement any DSL you want and just have it output YAML.

Ansible really should have ditched the YAML format a long time ago. The YAML is practically designed to be executable; I'm almost surprised that you can't add a shebang line pointing to Ansible at the top of your YAML. I'm actually a little surprised they've never offered an option to write parts of your Ansible setup in Python.

I would love to make some of my roles and my playbook into Python code. I am forever googling the syntax to set up a loop in Ansible YAML, as well as how to make dependencies between roles, which is pretty cleanly solved with Python modules (just import and execute the role at the top of your new role).

> I'm almost surprised that you can't add a shebang line pointing to Ansible at the top of your YAML.

You actually can do that, with something like:

    #!/usr/bin/env ansible-playbook
    ---
    - hosts: localhost
      tasks:
        - debug: var=ansible_distribution_release

It works pretty nicely, just remember to make your playbook file executable. It's a bit cumbersome though since you cannot use `ansible-playbook` arguments like `--limit`, `--diff`, `--check` and so on to have better control over the playbook execution.

What about UCL?

https://github.com/vstakhov/libucl